The Village Store

Voices from the Past 1930-1960: Etchingham

I have to congratulate you for getting so much out of us

I want to write a book about my life now

I did enjoy seeing how it all fitted together

INTRODUCTION

THE ETCHINGHAM GROUP The group gathered for several weekly sessions in an upstairs room over the Village Store in the winter of 2006. Surrounded by historical records of Etchingham; community photographs, albums, books of local records, shields and with a view of ancient trees in the field across the Roman road, it was like being in another era.

The people in this group were more localised than the other creative reminiscence groups, coming from Etchingham, Burwash and Robertsbridge, some living the best part of their lives in or around these villages. It was extraordinary how everyone had real connections with each other through people and places. We laughed together over the name game, played music and discussed a variety of topics. Stories flowed as one person’s reminiscence quickly triggered another’s and lives were shared from the smallest personal details to the largest collective experiences. How pain was born, how

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death was part of daily life – even travelling hairdressers were subjects to contemplate. There were vivid accounts of village schools; of teachers and naughtiness, inkwells and canes; wartime with bombs rolling down the street, pigs on the black market, meetings with famous people and memories of local shops that sold everything from dresses, peas to pens! These small villages seemed as busy as huge cities!

After the sessions there was a performance of the stories in Etchingham Village Hall on 31st January 2007 with a wonderfully involved audience laughing and singing along and being truly touched by each person’s life.

Although all the facts and the words in these stories are true to what was related in the sessions, certain aspects of individual accounts inspired some creative interpretation, as you will see in the first poem and in Myrtle Capon’s tale of hairdressing horrors!

We invite you to take a trip along the road from Robertsbridge to Etchingham to Burwash and back again.

About the group:

Jane Metcalfe Clare Whistler Shaping Voices 2

“When you plumped a suitcase in the middle of the floor a kangaroo could have jumped out, but all these obscure objects inside drew so much from us.”

The Village Store DELIVERING GROCERIES FOR A VILLAGE STORE

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JUMBLE-SALE JILL

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EAGER ELLA

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FUNERALS

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DOROTHY ANNE

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DRIFTING, DOUBTFUL DOROTHY

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DOROTHY’S FATHER

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MARCEL-WAVE MYRTLE

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VICTORIOUS, CRANKY VIC

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AMIABLE AUDREY

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WAR WORDS

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NAME GAME

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WHAT IS CREATIVE REMINISCENCE?

VOICES FROM THE PAST: 1930-1960: BATTLE

Creative Reminiscence sessions lead to informal performances of original stories based on the personal reminiscences of people over the age of 60. The sessions are run by facilitators with a strong background in the arts and provide an interesting, light-hearted and stimulating environment where those taking part can enjoy rediscovering and sharing their memories in a new and meaningful way.

THE PROJECT A series of five Creative Reminiscence projects for people over the age of 60 living in Rother, funded by the Heritage Lottery fund in partnership with Rother District Council (Indian Summer Project). Group sessions and performances were hosted in Battle, Peasmarsh, Bexhill, Westfield and Etchingham, with participants joining from surrounding areas.

Delivering Groceries for a Village Store

From Robertsbridge to Etchingham to Burwash we will go, The Roman Road goes back again, so we will not be slow.

All groceries delivered, no baskets to heave, With lists of ingredients, are they ready, please.

All you needed from the Chemist came from Battle by the bus, And fishermen from Hastings, brought fish here just for us.

Pigs running up the hill, with buckets on their heads, Trotting to the butchers, where they would soon be dead, Mean butcher Jarvis, after the killing, Making Flead cakes, two for a shilling.

Father striding up the hill, for a Sunday drink, Five pubs in the High Street, meeting friends to clink!

Big balloon drinks, bright red and bright yellow, Ginger beer with ice cream in, he is a jolly fellow.

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Crisps with twists of salt were just coming into fashion, Fred Farley’s, a sort of junk shop, that was my passion.

‘Waters’ of Robertsbridge, the Burwash store called ‘Wrens’ Shops that sold EVERYTHING, from dresses, peas to pens.

Funeral Directors, one, two, three, four pubs Two places that sold houses, two butchers, formed a hub.

Grocers of Burwash, one,two, three and four, Old lady in a sweet shop, three steps up to the door.

Grocers fetching orders, getting what we planned Don’t forget your ration book, getting what we can.

From Robertsbridge to Etchingham to Burwash we will go, The Roman Road goes back again, so we will not be slow.

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Jumble-Sale Jill

I went to school in Ticehurst. It was grim when you look back on it, with outside toilets, terrible cooking; rice in great big lumps. The first day I went there they gave you one spoon so I was eating my first course and then they came with the pudding course and I asked for another spoon and I was told: you don’t have another spoon you lick it. And we had those tiny chairs – you know, half tub chairs – to sit on. We were taught by Mrs McQueen – later her sister too. There was Miss Watts and a Miss Robinson, who was absolutely super. We did

Hiawatha with her – such a great feeling. We’d jump around with a ring round our heads with a feather stuck in. She had a maroon blazer with stripes. I’d never seen anything like it before! The Headmaster Bill Bowers had a bald head and teeth that didn’t fit very well, so every time he laughed his teeth fell down.

Behind his desk he’d got his cane in a cupboard at the side and there were also all these stuffed birds in this big glass case – most peculiar. The heating was one of those big cast iron things that you fed coke in and you had the fire guard round it, so it kept you very warm if you were very near, but very cold when you weren’t.

My mother walked me to school three miles in the morning and came and fetched me three miles in the afternoon; of course in those days we had lots of snow in the winter and sometimes the snow was so deep it was well over my wellies, so you just had to empty them. Mum used to cycle some of the way until after the war, because in those days you had to carry your gas mask with 7

you, so that every time anything happened you jumped in a ditch with your gas mask. There were shelters in the school, under the ground and I remember having my gas mask on for the first time and Bill Bowers came along and tapped me on the head and said “breathe, breathe.” I thought you had to hold your breath all the time! I didn’t realise you had to breathe.

I was born in ’35 and we moved from Orpington to Sheep Street Lane in ’36 – first to Woodland – which is now rather like a Spanish hacienda, but was more plain back then. There was no mains water; Mum had a big 40 gallon barrel sunk in the ground for the water and one day I fell in, so she hauled me out. When we came to Oaklands – there was no electricity either, so it was oil lamps.

George Ballard had a shop where Robin Wood is now; it was like a wooden shack and he sold paraffin for the lamps and the heating. We did cooking on oil as well and he charged up the batteries for the radio because you had accumulators in those days; he also sold Smith’s crisps with little packets of blue salt in them in and we used to go up there with our ration books and buy the things that we were allowed to buy. It was quite exciting really.

The milk used to come by pony and trap down from Bob Bakers; his uncle ran it; he had a milk churn in the trap and there were these measures hanging on the side; you’d take a jug out and he would fill it; sometime you’d get the husk of the corn floating in the top of it. Lovely!

My mother decided to go very rural and to have some pigs. She had them over on the ground that Mr Syndercombe owned. During the war we bought the pigs’ food on the black market and then we sold half a pig to get some more money to start again. We used to get the old cookery book out and draw marks on where the joints were and then cut them up on the kitchen table and sell them off. Pigs feature quite a lot in my life, as well as ducks and geese and 8

sheep, and dogs. We’ve always had dogs.

Everybody who lives here is very loyal to Sheep Street Lane. You all had your patch – your street, who you knew. Sometimes just a couple of miles away seemed quite alien. We didn’t travel far then. In my childhood days the people I played with were all living up here. We used to make lovely mud slides at the back of these woods. We’d pour water down the bank and then slide down on a sack or something and come home absolutely plastered and of course we had hard frosts so all the ponds would freeze; we would go skating on the ponds and try and play ice hockey; it was a bit difficult because the bits of wood would stick up out of the ice; but the ice was deep. In the spring time we’d go tadpoling in the ponds and pick primroses and tie them up in bunches with wool and post them off in shoeboxes to my aunt at Blackheath so that she could see primroses. I mean, up the road here we didn’t have fertiliser or anything on the plants then and you would have the most gorgeous violets, white or purple and the smell was beautiful but they are no longer there – only dog violets. Now so much of it’s overgrown. But we still have bluebells and primroses.

Jill Waterhouse

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Eager Ella

My early days were spent in a family farm house on a farm in Staplecross. I can remember our scullery because that’s where all the work happened– there was my grandfather, my Dad, my Mum, and my old auntie who was difficult, and me! There was an old pump for water – no hot water, no electricity, paraffin lamps and candles and ordinary oil lamps. There were brick floors and two windows, a copper for washing – always on a Monday, with my aunt under one of the windows to let the steam out. The door had a latch and when my Mum was skinning a rabbit one of the cats would hang on the latch and let all the other cats in. We had lots of cats being on a farm.

Mum would stick a brick against the door to keep them out! They used to cook with the range in the scullery and bread was baked over a fire in the oven; but we didn’t eat in there. They used to kill pigs and hang them in the scullery and wash them down to get the bristles off. mum churned butter. It was difficult. She just kept on churning. The churn was kept in an alley; in the pantry was the separator and if you didn’t turn it quick enough a bell would go off. Mum was ill when I was 13 and she would call down: “Who’s turning the handle?” “I am”, I’d call back “Well turn quicker!” When my mother cooked cakes auntie would come down in the night and take them upstairs to her room. She took them up to “order them”. They had to put a lock on her door to stop her going down. There was coal in one half of the cellar and eggs and butter in the other. We sold the butter from the house and before the war Mum used to cycle to Battle to sell it. Outside there was a 10

square piece where I played and a narrow passage way. I could see the school from outside.

I never grew to like school. I started all right, but after a bit I didn’t want to go; my mother walked me to school slapping my legs, sometimes the teacher had to take me into school upside down. Then my mother let me stay at home but I had to stand in the corner between the desk and the grandfather clock and was only allowed outside at the same time as the school break. I went for a little while after that; then at six I stopped. I found the farm much more interesting than the Times Tables! I did have to go back, but when I was seven I got pneumonia so missed more again.

It was a very small school; the toilets were horrible old things and the boys and girls had separate playgrounds; The Headmistress lived next to the school and the infant teacher lived with one of my aunts. We never had water in school, we had to go next door to get it; then we heated it in a big kettle over a coal fire and had OXO for midday break – sometimes Horlicks. On Fridays we would go up to a field to play stoolball but I did not like that either.

Couldn’t see the point of it all.

When I was 12 I had to take a small girl to school and she cried too! I was always very nervous going to school. If the steamroller was on the road, I would walk home through the fields to avoid it. I was always so scared. I was scared that the gypsies would find me. I was not cured of being scared until I had to do a milk round and then I couldn’t be!

I left school when I was 14. My first job was on the farm doing everything for 6d an hour. We all used to do a bit of anything and everything. We made bundles of faggots to burn to make kettles boil and we’d take them to 11

Guinness’s hop yard for the Londoners – not too many as they burned them too quick! Mum was a homemaker but she worked on the farm too. Besides doing the farm Dad used to thatch and he did woodcutting; he made spiles which were used as stakes for the hop poles. Mum and I would shave the rind off them; oh they were so heavy. In 1940 we moved to Roberstbridge – to another farm called Redlands. During the war Dad was in the Home Guard. He never said a word about World War One. Nothing. There was a small hop garden near the Seven Stars, where dad used to work; he’d go up and down with the horses in amongst the hops doing the stringing. He was getting on for 80 and he still worked.

I went hop-training but I didn’t get on well with that; I preferred to look after the horses. We only had two or three at Redland, but I enjoyed it except when one trod on my foot! Then I learnt to milk and went to work on a farm opposite the George Hotel – that’s when I started the milk round. I did the round at seven o’clock in the morning; Saturday was worse as that was the day I had to do all the money. They had to pay; some did, some didn’t, so they were sent a reminder. Milk was rationed – 4d halfpenny a pint, 9d a quart – straight from the cow. I did that for five years during the war. Once I was nearly blown up by a doodlebug.

I stopped the round after the war – too much traffic for my horse and cart. My last horse, no one else could make her work. “Why does she stop here? Why there?” they’d say. But she worked well for me; even if I went in three houses, she’d be there waiting for me. Topsy – good as gold. I don’t have anything to do with horses now, but I have a dog. I like animals and they like me. We seem to understand one another. I can’t imagine life without an animal around. They make me feel – well, human.

Ella Wood 12

Funerals

When I was 12 I saw a dead body in a coffin. I remember them carrying coffins by hand to church.

The bells would ring for each year of your life. That’s how I found out Jack Jones had died and his age – 73 rings!

When there was a funeral we didn’t make any noise or play. Blinds were drawn in the whole village when someone died. If there was a funeral procession you would stop.

People’s sitting rooms were only used for dead bodies; it was always cold in there – maybe for that reason.

Mrs Coppard used to come and do the laying out; she always wore a green beret and a green raincoat – the official layer-out.

Then there was Granny Burgess. She was the midwife. She helped them give birth at home. She went to most houses. If they died she laid out the dead.

I married a Waterhouse and we took over the funerals There were more weddings than funerals, weddings were at the weekends. I’d 13

go to the churchyard every Saturday with my mother, go with a basket of flowers and clippers and cut the family graves – all my friends were doing the same.

Death was part of your life.

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Dorothy Anne

My mother was pregnant during the war. She had Muscular Dystrophy and a marvellous sense of humour. These muscles went, and these (shows arms and hips/thighs) and I heard that when doodlebugs came she would lose her balance and fall over. Dorothy would hide her in a cupboard – as long as the bump went in – she was happy, saving her aunt from the doodlebugs. I was born in Hastings, it was a big event., a caesarean. We were brought home with a Union Jack on the wheelchair. For the next six months we all lived at Dorothy’s house. She would rush home from school, which she thought was a waste of time and to be avoided whenever possible, to look after the baby, me.

My Dad was born in Burwash, a carter by on a farm. He started with Mr Finlayson at The Bear pub, where he was trained as a carpenter and joiner.

Mr F was the undertaker, so my dad worked on coffins and looked after the horses. In 1926 he had served his apprenticeship so he started his own business: Builders and Undertakers – he needed two jobs. Somebody died at home and he would go round to measure them. He used to make the coffins. He warmed pitch on a primus, to make it watertight – it was nice and warm to put your fingers in. We had to cover the coffins with blue and mauve material. I got into trouble once for getting sawdust on it. He would polish oak coffins for hours and hours. He did Mrs Kipling’s funeral. My mother used to sit in the front room and do the arrangements. Saturday afternoon’s were for funerals.

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I remember my Dad used to consider it was a holiday to come down and help us with the hop picking. We would be picked up by a lorry in the High Street, sitting on tipping benches inside, and go down past Batemans and rattle over the bridge. If it was a nice morning we would pull bine, when it was wet we would get cold and get sore arms.

Children would pick into upturned umbrellas. We were told “You shouldn’t get leaves in the bin.”

It’s a ‘hoppy’ morning – that was the saying when it was hot, wet and cold all in one day.

Dorothy Waterhouse

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Drifting, doubtful Dorothy

My father started the Burwash Laundry in the 20s.There was a big stove with tiers and irons all around. Take an iron off, spit on a finger, spit on the iron – I was quite small when I learnt to do that. Moses baskets would have rows and rows of frills to the ground – they would be crimped by crimping irons – gophering irons like hair curlers for all around the maid’s caps and collars, all the ruffs for the choir. It was a big choir! Starching and ironing their beautiful surpluses – I used to iron them. Blue tissue was put inside them so they wouldn’t crease. I can’t remember burning anything; it was quite a skilled thing. Old Jo Hynan, she was as old as the hills and had better sandwiches than my mother made for me, well, I was supposed to have her irons after they cooled, but I used to sneak off and get my own. I did get some hot ones! Then there were the damask tablecloths and a big barrow outside with three or four barrels of linen on it hung out to dry. in the war the priority was all the soldier’s clothes, they were billeted all around.

My earliest memory is standing on the scaffolding watching soldiers marching along Etchingham Road. When I was really young my sister said I had to give cheese to the man in the moon or he would come and get me! I would go outside and throw it up to him. Cheese was in short supply in the war, my Mum used to wonder where it had gone.

On Sunday mornings I went to the dairy at Shrubb Lane Farm, to get cream in a blue jug, pushing my doll’s pram. I loved the smell of the dairy – putting 17

measures down in the cream, the shiny churns. All the way home I kept putting my finger in it to lick. The next time I took a spoon – there was almost none left by the time I got home. My Mum said “Mrs. Morris has given you short

measure!”

My bedroom was very, very cold with a cold blue lino floor. There was a rug by the bed on the other side of the room from the door. I would leave the rug next to the door, undress in the bathroom – warmer in there, then I would jump on the rug in a certain way and with a bit of luck the rug would slide across the room, I’d jump straight into bed, so I didn’t have to touch the cold floor.

My Mum and Dad were always working. Under the table was where I was most of the time. A big mahogany table in the dining room which was really the living room, it was really an ‘everythin’ room. I was very frightened of ‘Germans’ so I would push the table up to the outside wall and sit under it so the bombs would hit it not me. If there was an air raid I would sit under there and do prep. My sister would not get under the table with me: you’d hear the planes going over and she would sit at the table drawing – me under, her over. At night we had to fit the black out, beaver-board with toggles on the side that you twisted on. Always had a big fuss about light and getting them up in time. In a cottage a few yards away lived my grandmother and four uncles who had Muscular Dystrophy and were all in wheelchairs. We had to do their blackouts as well. There was an Anderson Shelter - it was never put up because the wheelchairs couldn’t get in.

Not very sensible, but we didn’t go in because they couldn’t.

My grandmother had thirteen children. Four boys had muscular dystrophy and lived at home. You never said “What can I do?” I was busy, busy, busy. How people bore pain compared to now.

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I started walking to school when I was five, half a mile up Shrubb Lane. My sister, who was much cleverer than me all my life, was supposed to wait for me, but she did not like us to walk together. I used to trot up by myself - one day I caught up to her and we had the same patterned dresses on - she went home and changed hers. We had to go through the graveyard instead of down dangerous Bell Alley. Death was a part of your life. There were inkwells in double desks. Nina had long black plaits, but was a pain in the butt, a goody two shoes, always flinging her plaits around - we dipped them in the inkwells and she sprayed everyone!

I never liked school; luckily I only went for half a day as the evacuees went to the other. They split us up. As I said I was terrified of ‘Germans’ so I used to go to school, then go to the fields with the boys looking for Germans and shrapnel – lots of shrapnel, no Germans. When I went on to Bexhill I took the 7.40 Bodiam Express to Battle on to Sidley then walked for a mile at the other end; no train back till 5.30 pm. They were long, long days. I got caught smoking in the waiting room with boys and was told off by the headmistress. I remember the pattern in the carpet in her study, I used to trace it around with my foot – shows how often I went to see her! Sometimes there would be a bomb on the line and you’d not get back till 7- 8- 9- 10pm. You never knew if you were going to get home, yet were punished for trivial things. It’s like the beaches at Eastbourne being covered with barbed wire – we were deprived of a lot of things that come automatically, like learning to swim; your parents thought you would die.

It was a very exciting time to grow up though. We knew what the goals were – all had the same goals. Women were liberated.

Dorothy Palmer

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Dorothy’s Father

I didn’t meet my father till he was 68! That’s when I was born. He came from a family in the Midlands – one side of the family drank and was penniless, one didn’t and owned lots of houses. He was on the penniless side. At some point he came south with nothing. He started by pushing rich ladies and men in their bathchairs along the front at Hastings. Then he bought his own bathchairs to push. He was a bass-baritone and made money from singing. He married the daughter of the owner of the St Leonard’s Laundry and came to Burwash to start the Burwash Laundry. His wife died in Burwash – hers is the biggest cross in the churchyard:

“Swift and sudden was the parting, taken home without a sigh”. We could not think her life was ended, because she never said goodbye. My father then met my mother who was only twenty, twenty-two, at The Bell, she had come to the village to help with all her family with MD. He was very handsome, wore leather gaiters; a drinker, very active, full of information and sang beautifully.

My father was kind and he’d made his life comfortable, there was always money for all the neighbours in the village to have a hundredweight of coal at Christmas, and with the laundry van he would take the staff on annual trips to Pevensey, we were one of the few families to have a vehicle and petrol during the war. His sister, a contralto and her son, another baritone, originally from the non-drinking side of the family, would come from Birmingham to make music. When they got in the bungalow in the front room with the piano, we had to go to the other end of the house it was so noisy!

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Marcel-wave Myrtle

I only stopped hairdressing about ten years ago when my leg got bad. All that standing doing perms! I used to hear all sorts of stories but I don’t remember them because you learn to shut your mind to things in case you repeat them; they’d tell you such intimate secrets, things which are really private and you’d think “well mustn’t repeat those, must I? It’s nothing to do with me; I’m just listening” But I don’t mind telling you my story. That’s if you don’t mind listening.

I made up my mind when I was ten years old what I wanted to do; I either wanted to be a dress maker or a hairdresser. I learnt to be a hairdresser and I taught myself dress making. So a bit of both really.

I lived in Burwash . It was lovely. We came there when I was little and lived in a cottage in the back of beyond – Fontridge Lane. I used to have to go three miles across seven fields to school and I had to take the neighbours children with me. Just the other day my granddaughter’s partner said that his grandfather knew me, so I said “What was his name?” “Isted”, he said, and I said “I remember the Isteds – they were the children I had to take to

school, so I must have taken your grandfather mustn’t I?” I remember at school there was a very nice Headmaster called Mr Verrall.

He had a daughter who was about 17 and I had to make a pyjama set for her 21

because I was the only one who could sew properly at school – it was an orangey colour with a deeper orange arrangement on it and a pocket with her initial on, I remember that plain as anything. I think it was G. It was lovely.

I learnt to do hairdressing in Catford. Mum took us up there in 1935 after dad died thinking the boys would get better jobs, but one by one they all came back. I hated it in London, hated it, but at least I learned hairdressing.

When I was doing a perm, I would look out the window at all those houses crammed together and think, I’d love to be back in the country now and I’d dream about my days in Burwash.

There were eight of us – four girls and four boys. My lively sister – Lillian Olwen Maud – she was terrible, so daring. It was her who taught me to dance to a phonograph record when I was 13. I’ve loved dancing ever since.

We’d go to Brighton to dance – we’d go when it was light and come back when it was light. Lillian and I used to do Mum’s shopping for her on a Saturday and we’d go across the fields and come back over the bridge; we’d hang over the edge and look down and she would drop the shopping in the water; she had to dive in and get it out the best she could and go home with it all wet. She was like that – just did things, did Lillian. We were walking round the road way once and, I forget his name, the writer – Kipling – had a few apple trees; it wasn’t a big orchard; my sister and I we thought we’d go and pinch an apple and he caught us up the tree. He didn’t shout; he said “Well you know its wrong, don’t you, to take what doesn’t belong to you? Well take an apple and don’t go up there any more.” We didn’t take any more ever. My sister would have done, but I’m a bit timid, I would be frightened of being caught again.

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I had my first two children in my sister’s house in Mountfield. I can remember the room, a double bed, a cot, a wardrobe. I lay in bed for three weeks and looked out the window; there was a cornfield. I used to watch the farmers go back and forth ploughing – like they were combing hair.

After the war we lived in Shrubb Lane. Right near to the railway line. It was lovely. I used to go around doing hair. Never had a shop. I had to carry everything – big bag of rollers etc; they wouldn’t do it now would they?

One day a pretty nurse came to me and said “Now Mrs Capon, I wonder if you could do me a favour and start hairdressing for the housebound?” So I said “Yes” but of course that meant walking a lot.

I was the only hairdresser in Burwash for a long time. I used to do finger waving – that’s all we used to do at one time. You pressed the comb through it with your fingers; pressing it makes a shape. I don’t suppose finger waving will ever come back do you?

Up in the shop in London I did Necto dyeing, but I didn’t do it privately because you couldn’t carry a thing like that around with you. Then there was the Marcel wave, with the irons. One day this woman came in and she asked could she have a Marcel wave. The boss said yes: her hair was thick with grease – can you imagine the smell? Hot irons on greasy hair... but you had to do it. That wasn’t the worst of it. There’s one story that still makes me shudder whenever I think of it. You want to hear it? Oh well alright then...

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Nit Rap Once upon a time in the shop in Catford town, There were 16 perm chairs up, 6 down; I was up with the 16 when the boss came in: “There’s a lady here says she wants a perm.”

So I started her off – like you always do – sitting on the perm chair, like you’re ’sposed to do, stringing up her hair in squares in squares, stringing up her hair in squares.

When I got to the back, it felt funny and I thought that I ought to take a look and this is what I saw: She was caked, yes, caked, yes, caked in nits.

I said “I can’t do this” to the boss, I said.

And he took one look and “Madam” he said, “You’re caked, yes, caked, yes, caked in nits.

If you want to have a perm you need Quasher chips.”

She was most annoyed and swept out of the door and the comb and the clips went into the drawer to be soaked with the brush in formaldehyde.

So before you have a perm, you’ve gotta squash those nits, by soaking your hair in Quasher chips.

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Oh and in case you’re wondering, Quasher chips were steeped in water, you soaked your hair in it and wore a cap for three days, then rinsed it in vinegar to get rid of the nits. Did it work...?

Myrtle Capon

Victorious, cranky Vic I’ve lived in Etchingham all my life and I’ve met people – famous people, and things have happened to me the likes of which you mayn’t believe, like when I was struck by lightning outside Bodiam Castle and only my shoes got burnt, or the time I met Gandhi. Sometimes the facts get a bit muddled – a name here or a date there. But it’s all true!

I can remember as far back as three when I used to visit Grandfather. He wore a leather waistcoat, with a big watch, that chimed. Out the back there was a well. I looked down the well and Grandfather said, “There’s a man down

there who’ll pull you in.” There was a room full of harnesses and a big gramophone with a horn. I remember a song called Gooseberry Pie: They will

make your belly ache. Can’t remember the tune. I had a rubber mouse you wound up and it ran round and round and Grandfather smoked pipes with silver tops. What’s that for, I asked? And he said “They’re for keeping the wind

out, mate.”

Everything was covered with big white hairs cos they had terrier dogs. They were for catching rats and they were always called Towser. My Grandparents lived near Fontridge Manor; grandfather was a carter with the horses. He once 25

took me on the Shire horse in front. I sat with the driver who had an onion and an apple in a red cloth, a big lump of very hard cheese and cold tea. The horses had a big leather bag on with a muzzle with oats in. The three dogs came along too.

I was born disabled. My mother was savaged by a dog when she was carrying me and they said that’s what did it. She couldn’t look after me on her own so she gave me to my Grandparents. I don’t ever remember a father. Grandfather was getting on a bit, so Grandmother asked Mrs Funnell, the lady who sometimes had me, if she’d take me for ten shillings a week and she said yes. The pay only lasted a couple of weeks, but I stayed on and on. One day my grandparents came to get me but she said she would never give me back, so she became my foster mother. She was a real country person, my foster mother, hop-tying, cutting all around the cornfield, “opening up” it was called, turnip hoeing; she used to pick up acorns for the pigs, a penny a bushel, and she picked primroses she’d make into bunches to sell. Her husband had been killed in 1916, so there was no foster father. She had one daughter and three sons and treated me like I was one of them. I used to go fishing and a lady used to come down to the stream to get water and she’d wave at me, but it wasn’t til later I learnt that she was my real mother. She came from Bexhill to Etchingham to live with her sister – in the same street as us. Years later she stopped me in the street and asked me, “Will you come back to me?” – I said NO, because I was still living with my foster mother and I could never have left her. I should like to have gone and seen my mother but I would have been in hot water. Who knows what I should have done?

I had a bad accident with my bad arm when I was twelve and a half; tripped over the curb – the doctor said it was badly bruised, but it wasn’t, it was broken and later it was reset in plaster. Whilst I was recovering I spent a lot of time watching Etchingham church being straightened. They put steel rods in the church and they’d 26

put steel rods in my arm. I was 14 when I got better, so I never went back to school.

I loved school, but they didn’t love me. I tried to set the school on fire a couple of times. Two people sat on a wooden bench behind the door. The door had a roller towel on it; we’d pull it up and down so the cover got hot. We’d put paper there and it would catch fire. Another time we threw a match over dried tomato plants and went on into school. In the cloakroom there were three washbasins.

We’d put the three plugs in, turn the taps and watch the slow trickle of water go in over the headmaster’s feet! Ooh that was fun! We’d put blotting paper in inkwells so it was good and inky and roll it up into little balls and flick it with a wooden ruler at the ceiling. I flicked darts made with pen nibs! There was a room separated by a curtain and one of the teachers, Miss Newton, was getting married and was all dressed up – we thought who’d want to marry that old hag?

She must have only been in her twenties – and we flicked the blotting paper up and over the curtain and down on her new hat! There was a huge tank of water at the top of the playground. We were chasing a boy and he climbed up on top of it and so did we; it had a wooden door that was rotten, so we all fell in. We had three teachers. Over the teachers’ desk there was a hole that went into the corridor. We’d run in with snowballs and throw it at the hole and hope it would hit the teacher. I was caned four or five times right across the fingers. Ooh! That didn’t hurt!! One teacher used to swear “I’ll give you a... etc” and she’d move you up and down til your teeth rattled. Old Wolf we called her. Those were the days.

There was a celebration up there and a big sigh of relief when I left.

After the accident I had about a year without work. They all said “No you’ll never

be able to do anything.” I asked everywhere. I used to deliver groceries for the village shop and another one up the road. I’d walk with a basket of groceries up to the farm and I helped an old woman weed her garden. Then I started a post 27

round and did both the post from 6.00 to 7.30 and the butcher 8.00 to 5.00, four shillings a week. I worked in the slaughterhouse – Old Mr Jarvis the butcher – mean old Devil! I was 16. They used to kill their own cattle, fed pigs and chickens etc. One woman, a Maltese lady who used to breed goats – we sold it as lamb and nobody noticed – well she used to take the skins back and make them into coats, but they were not cured so they smelt.

When I did the public address system at the fetes I met all sorts: Alec Guinness, Eammon Andrews, Cyril Fletcher, Harry H Corbett. Lots of public figures have lived around here – what’s-is-name at Batemans, Tommy Handley, Potty Packenham, Jack Hargreaves, but I’ll never forget meeting Gandhi. Of course I didn’t know who he was then. I must have been about eight. 1931 or 2. It was at the Slades’ House on the road from Robertsbridge to Etchingham; half a mile from the village there’s a sharp corner and then a big house. Miss Slade was secretary to Gandhi – followed his religion. My foster mother’s daughter was cook there and I used to go there to eat cream buns on a Friday. I remember he came into the kitchen when I was having my cream bun, this funny little brown man with a sheet wrapped round him and he patted me on the head and said “Who’s this little boy then?” My godfather who was chauffeur to the Slades took Gandhi to the station in the Rolls Royce. He said Gandhi sat in the back with his legs crossed up on the seat and he did the same on the train too!

I was in my late 30s, the excitement of the war had long gone and something was missing. A friend said I know this lovely girl in Henfield. I went right over there to meet her – a slip of a girl – and brought her back here. If it wasn’t for Audrey I don’t know what would have happened to me.

I like stories. Telling them, listening to them. People’s memories – the world’s made up of them. That’s what the world is: a great big store of memories.

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Vic Catt

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Amiable Audrey

I am always dreaming of music. Trails of songs filter through my thoughts as I move about my day, I have my two organs, three keyboards and sheets and sheets of music at home. In infant school I got pneumonia and as I was ill so long I was sent to a private school till I was eleven, the teacher was a music teacher and that is where I learned to play. I remember taking my piano exams, the Trinity College of Music, sitting at the piano in the Brighton Pavilion, the Dome, I was so nervous. I loved classical music, Mozart and Handel.

When I was ill I used to lie in bed and listen to my cow called Cowslip, mooing to me like a comforting lullaby. I was almost like an only child until my brother was born when I was thirteen. We lived next door to the Head Gardener of an estate in Henfield, West Sussex. When the Head Gardener was care taking and the children were at boarding school or everyone was away, I had the run of the place. Roaming around, black berrying, chasing rabbits in the shrubbery and creeping into the house to practice on the grand piano, not the old upright at home.

My mother was in service before having me, she got to be a lady’s maid but it was “still in service”. My father was a gardener all his life , learning from my mother’s father. He loved gardening and was very proud to be a gardener .

Vegetables, pruning roses, he did pruning properly, riding a big mower on big lawns for the big house. Starting at seven and working all day. He also looked 30

after the graves in the cemeteries, grapes too – gardening was his life. I remember doing the rounds with him on Sunday and in the greenhouses loving the sound of tapping the flowerpots to see if they were hollow and needed watering.

When I was fourteen, just after the war, I went around on a bike doing domestic work, lots of houses – big houses with lovely things. Lots of exercise from scrubbing and polishing and carbolic soap – and no rubber gloves. If you tried to knit in the evenings ones hands hurt too much, playing the piano became l a memory. But I was always thinking of music – I think the only way to know a piece of music is to hear it for yourself. I am always listening to music in my head.

Then my life changed completely! Vic found me and brought me back to Etchingham.

Audrey Catt

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War Words When the war started I left Burwash and took my first child back up to Catford; we went up there on the Friday and the bombing started on the Saturday.

Everybody had to be in something – Home Guard or the Fire Brigade The Home Guard was run down at Etchingham at Ladyfield. My father was Lieutenant and he used to march them and show them all the different shaped bombs and things; he got the cross for bomb disposal in the First World War. The Germans dropped their spare load in Salehurst just past the church – one, two, three – down the hill. A horse and some cows died. Made the bells ring and everyone thought we’d been invaded! I remember going to have a look.

I was air warden watching for crashed planes. I took pictures of bombers and bodies to document them. I went out three nights a week and slept in a ditch. I remember seeing five parachutes come down all together one day. Exciting!

At home we’d sing when the bombers were going over and the bombs were dropping. We sang all sorts, all the old music hall songs: Roll Out the Barrell,

My Old Man; we knew them all! Mother used to play on a comb and paper and I’d read the words out of the song sheet and sing. We had an Old English sheep dog and he used to howl along with us so it would drown out everything!

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We had a Morrison in our kitchen. The best part of it was one night we all piled in there and I had a land girl either side of me!

They dug an Anderson shelter in Redlands. It was so cold and damp in there We had an Anderson shelter – but it was never put up because in my father’s cottage my grandmother lived with my uncles in wheelchairs and they couldn’t go in the shelters.

All cars had thick white paint round the mudguard so you could see them in the dark Mrs Morris was always showing a light. They bombed her house when she was having a bath. It went through the house, through her hips, through the pipe, through the bath, across the road and then stopped.

There’s a clock in Robertsbridge which is also a war memorial.

The war memorial here is normal with a stone cross, a plinth with three steps.

They added a bit on the side for five people killed in the last war My uncle’s name is on our war memorial: Charles Vigor.

On the anniversary of any death a light burns on top of the Burwash war memorial. About five years ago they made the light automatic. Before that there was a family in the village who would go along and turn it on. Albie Waterhouse – he did it for years. That was dedication.

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Name Game Think of a word or phrase connected to village life beginning with the first letter of your name. This is what we came up with: Village Vic Arable Audrey Jumble-Sale Jill Egg-collecting Ella Marcel-wave Myrtle In-the-ditch Dorothy

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The Battle Group Dorothy Palmer (nee Hunt)

Facilitators/writers

Vic Catt

Jane Metcalfe

Audrey Catt

Clare Whistler

Jill Waterhouse (nee Perry)

with

Ella Wood (nee Russell)

Sarah Norris

Dorothy Waterhouse (nee Bysouth) Myrtle Capon (nee Rudd)

Project manager Rachel Lewis

Shaping Voices in partnership with

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Shaping Voices Shaping Voices is an East Sussex-based not-for-profit Arts Company whose aim is to bring the arts to groups of people in East Sussex who would not normally have the opportunity to explore this area of activity.

www.shapingvoices.co.uk

Design: www.designraphael.co.uk Print: www.elephantgraphics.co.uk

What is Creative Reminiscence? – a series of creative group sessions which lead to informal performances of original stories and monologues based on the personal reminiscences of people over the age of 60.

Contact Shaping Voices 01424 718 048 info@shapingvoices.co.uk www.shapingvoices.co.uk

This creative reminiscence project and book were funded by The Hertiage Lottery Fund and Rother District Council

Š Shaping Voices April 2007