6 Village life and village people

Chapter 6 Village Life and Village People

The growth and development of a village like Potterspury, over many hundreds (or even thousands) of years, is mainly due to the people who lived here. We know very little of most of them. They were born, lived and died here, leaving little, if anything, to tell of their existence. Church records tell us of their baptisms, marriages and burials, and, in more recent years, photographs give us clues as to the way they dressed and looked. Some old dwellings still exist, but they give us little idea of the cramped and uncomfortable conditions in which the majority of poor people lived and brought up large families. Towards the latter part of the 19th century, Potterspury was a most unhealthy place in which to live, with serious outbreaks of enteric or typhoid fever, a situation not fully remedied until piped water was installed in the village some years later.

Few written accounts exist of Potterspury village life before the 20th century. However, some people found that living here was much to their liking, as suggested by part of a letter written by the Rev. George Vowell in 1794. He wrote, “I am quite happy in the expectation of an abode in Potterspury, where I can hear the rustling of trees, where I can listen to the nightingale’s melodious notes, and where I can enjoy a walk in the green fields.” (More of this is in the account of the chapel.) More recently, C.G. Harper, writing in 1902, described the village as “Wholly old world and delightful,” and continued, “One comes into it under the thickly interlacing branches of tall hedgerow elms that conspire to cheer the traveller with a perpetual triumphant arch of welcome. Through this leafy bower one perceives the roadside cottages dwindling away in perspective along a gentle rise.”

We are pleased to publish in this chapter a number of written and narrated memories of villagers, many of them of childhood days, spanning much of the 20th century and giving us graphic accounts of very different lives from those we lead today. We conclude the chapter with extracts of interviews which reveal changes in the routine daily lives of families, from the thirties to the present.

Our first collection of memories was written in the late 1950s by Miss Hilda Faux. In addition to some of the pictures that accompanied her manuscript, we are very fortunate, thanks to Mrs Mary Nunnari, in having access to many other photographs taken by her father, Mr E.F. Peasland, and we have included many of these in this book. The original manuscript is now in the possession of the Russell family who have kindly allowed us to include most of her ‘Memories’ in this book, together with many of the photographs it contains.

Memories of a Villager –from the early 20th century Hilda Faux

My memories of this village of Potterspury in which I was born, go back for nearly half a century, and my earliest recollections are centred around St Nicholas Church and Wakefield Lodge, at that time the home of the seventh Duke of Grafton.

Watling Street in the early years of the 20th century.

Hilda Elizabeth Faux

Hilda Elizabeth Faux was born in Potterspury on St Valentine’s Day in 1906, the daughter of Benjamin, a carpenter, and Mary Faux. After leaving school she trained as a teacher and taught for many years at Wolverton where her pupils remembered her as firm but gentle, much loved and admired. Hilda was a regular church-goer and helped with the Sunday school. She also took an active part in village life outside the church and was at various times involved with the Women’s Institute (WI) and the Girl Guides.

In the 1950s she set down her childhood memories of village life under the title “Memories of a Villager”. They are a delightful, warm account of a way of life long gone and show the love she had for her village and its people.

Miss Faux’s memories end with the following poem which she wrote about the village; they were winning lines in a WI competition in 1946.

A village not void of beauty, in South Northamptonshire. To the passer-by not striking, to its own folk very dear. Its houses, both ancient and modern, are like its inhabitants too.

Some young and gaily painted, some mellow, some aged, but true.

The Duke was a man of strong character who lived to the age of 97, and for many years dominated the life of the village. A number of the village men were employed by him, working either on the farm, or in the gardens which supplied the produce for the house, or in the workshops which maintained the estate, which was large, and included several of the neighbouring villages. The wages of these men were small, the tradesmen earning not more than 24 shillings a week.

I remember so well the women, Mary Morris, Angela Ratcliffe, Charlotte Meakins, Annie Meakins and the others, who, wearing their black hats and their shawls or capes, set out each day to walk from the village up the long drive and in through the stable yard to their work in the laundry, or in the kitchen. Many of the villagers were very poor and gathered to buy dripping at the kitchen door. A large can of milk could be bought for a penny if one took the long walk to the dairy.

I remember being taken to Wakefield to see the oil painting of the Duke presented to him by the county on his ninetieth birthday. The Duke was a regular worshipper at the village church and every Sunday morning I saw the procession of carriages come down the drive, cross the Watling Street and proceed through the village, carrying the Duke, his visitors, and his servants to the church.

It was said that there were two processions on Sunday morning which met in the High Street, one going to church and the other to the bakehouse, where the villagers took their Sunday dinner, consisting of Yorkshire pudding and meat, to be baked for a penny.

The coach house and stables where the Duke’s horses were stabled during the service can still be seen in Church End. [4 Church End has since been built on the site.] The Duke and his servants sat in the chancel which is now used by the choir, and he, a stately figure, would enter through the chancel door, while the servants proceeded to the main door and entered according to rank. What fine looking men they were. The steward, the valet, the butler, the footmen, each wearing a frock coat and carrying a tall silk hat. The female staff were all dressed in black, the housekeeper, the cook, the housemaids, the still room maids, the kitchen maids and the laundry maids, and all had their hats tied with large black bows under their chins.

The vicar was the Rev. Walter Plant and he and his wife (the author of several books) presided graciously over the village and shared the joys

Hilda Faux and her brother Burrell with their parents. [Mrs Mary Nunnari]

Collecting the Sunday roast. [Mrs Mary Nunnari]

Hilda Faux in 1924. [Mrs Phyllis Russell]

Edward Frederick Peasland

Edward Frederick Peasland was born in the village in 1876 and grew up in one of the cottages that adjoined the Schoolhouse, a row which was demolished in the 1950s. His first job on completing his education was as a school monitor. Later he was employed as a clerk in the stores at Wolverton works. In the late 1890s he became interested in photography and set up his own darkroom. Through his attendance at church and membership of the choir he befriended the vicar of the day, Rev. Walter Plant. For nearly 30 years he recorded the people and events of Potterspury and kept meticulous records of over 400 photographs he had taken.

By the mid 1920s he retired from the works and his love of his family and his garden left little time for photography. He left his darkroom as he had used it and locked away the negatives which he had accumulated over the years.

and sorrows of all. Mrs Plant could often be seen driving round the village in the afternoon in a chaise, drawn by a small pony and driven by the sexton, Caleb Tapp. Mrs Plant did much for the mothers and children of the village: many were the rice puddings and jellies she delivered to the sick.

The church and Wakefield were closely connected, the Duke being patron of the living. It was to

His widow Gladys, who died in 1961, told an eerie story to her children. She was, as a child, an attractive girl with dark curly hair. In the 1920s she went with her sister to visit friends in North London. Whilst there, she went out with the friends who were collecting rents from some large properties in that part of London. She particularly remembered visiting one house where the friendly doctor who lived there sat her on his knee and made a great fuss of her. She was not to know until many years later that her friendly doctor was the notorious Doctor Crippen, later hanged for the murder of his wife!

After Gladys’ death, her daughter Mary (now Mrs Mary Nunnari) opened up the locked attic room and found all the photographic materials, including the negatives still there. We are greatly indebted to her for allowing us to use so many of those photographs to help illustrate this book.

Wakefield we went for our Sunday school treat each year. The farm wagons drawn by horses came to the gates of the school yard and we were helped in. We looked forward to this treat. We had tea in the coach house, ran races, were given bags of sweets and buns, and returned home singing lustily, “For he’s a jolly good fellow and so say all of us” as the wagons jogged along.

From Wakefield came the enormous Christmas tree each year. It was a pole reaching almost to the roof of the school: in it were holes, into which were fixed branches of fir to form a tree. It was then decorated, and there were toys for the boys and a doll for every girl. These dolls were all dressed by willing helpers. The following evening the tree was used for the adults, the charge being sixpence, and they each received a gift. A red tin lantern (with glass sides) into which one could fix a candle was a gift received by my mother and used by her for many years, when going out on dark nights.

Enormous pleasure was derived from concerts held in theschool during the winter, the programme being provided by local artists. We never tired of hearing the same old songs sung by the same singer, and if the vicar and his wife sang, “I will give you the keys of heaven”, and another well known artist sang, “The girl in the clogs and shawl”, our joy could not be measured.

Religion played a large part in the

Edward F. Peasland [Mrs Mary Nunnari]

Mrs Plant in the chaise outside the vicarage preparing for her afternoon outing . [Mrs Mary Nunnari]

Teddy Ratcliffe

Teddy was born in Potterspury in 1871 and is remembered mainly as the village carrier who for many years pushed a large hand-cart between Potterspury and Stony Stratford collecting orders from the shops for a small fee. He could neither read nor write, but he could remember all the orders and who placed them. Teddy was much admired for his hard work by the grateful shopkeepers of Stony Stratford who, seeing this slight figure barely visible behind the mountain of goods on his hand-cart, clubbed together and bought him a donkey to assist him in his labours. Alas, Teddy was not very good with animals and his troubles with the donkey became a village legend. One day outside a Stratford shop it collapsed and after

lives of many of the villagers, and there were large congregations at the three places of worship. There was at that time a Methodist Chapel in Blackwell End, and the preacher was Mr Eli Tapp, who worked during the week in Wakefield gardens. This chapel was later closed and made into two cottages. I recall the male members of the church choir, nine of them were faithful members for fifty years, these were Caleb Tapp, Rowland Woodward, Alfred Lambert, Walter Ratcliffe, George Dodson, Walter Green, Harry Henson, Levi Bliss and Alfred Faux.

Some of these men would in the afternoon walk through the fields to Furtho Church where a service was held. I remember going to a Harvest Festival service there and standing in the churchyard to join in the service as the church would not hold the congregation who came to the isolated church from the surrounding villages.

The living of Furtho was united with Potterspury in 1920, and soon afterwards the church was closed. I remember hearing the bomb fall in 1941 which fell near the church and unfortunately shattered the windows

Teddy Ratcliffe in later years. [Milton Keynes Museum]

examining it, a shopkeeper said, “I’m sorry Teddy, but it’s dead”. Teddy is said to have scratched his head and said, “That’s funny, it’s never done that before.” So he had to go back to pushing his hand-cart.

For many years Teddy was the organ blower at the church. For much of his adult life he lodged in Blackwell End, but ended his days in Danetre Hospital in Daventry. He was buried in a pauper’s grave much to the disgust of the Rev. R. G. Richards, the vicar at the time, who was most annoyed that the authorities had not let anyone in the village know. Had they done so, the church would gladly have paid for a funeral for this man who had served faithfully both the church and the people of Potterspury for so many years.

on the north side. The village schoolmaster, Mr A. J. Smith, could be seen each Sunday in frock coat and silk hat wending his way to the parish church to fulfil his duties as organist and, though small in stature, commanded the respect of everyone. He was headmaster for 38 years, from 1881 to 1919.

The organ was blown by hand by Mr Edwin Ratcliffe, affectionately known as Teddy. He walked the three miles from Wakefield Lawn twice every Sunday to perform this duty. He also walked each day pushing his

truck into Stony Stratford, and for the price of penny would do any errand. He took notes into the local doctor’s, and was a source of amusement, for he would often diagnose the complaint as well as deliver the note. He collected medicine from the chemist and often his truck was so laden with parcels that he could not see over them. The Stony Stratford tradesmen later bought him a donkey and cart, but Teddy was not very good with animals; the donkey did not live long, and he reverted to his hand truck. I recall Dr Powell who visited the village driving a grey horse in a

Teddy Ratcliffe with his cart in Stony Stratford. [Source: Jack Clamp]

high trap; Dr W. Bull riding on horseback; and later, Dr Douglas Bull riding a high bicycle with two bars.

Some of the village men worked in the Wolverton Carriage Works and walked the five miles to reach there by 6 a.m. Later they bought the “Mails”, two horse-drawn covered wagons, and drove themselves, stabling the horses in Wolverton to await the return journey at 6 p.m. [It is from these wagons that the village newsletter, The Old Mail derives its name.] In the village one was kept in The Ropewalk, which was no longer used for rope making, and one was kept at Mr Charles Stewart’s farm. Mr Stewart also had a covered cart and carried on a carrier’s business, driving the twelve miles into Northampton on Saturdays. He would also take passengers. We sometimes travelled with him to Collingtree to visit an uncle. We did not often go to Northampton but I remember walking to Castlethorpe to catch a train and walking back over the fields carrying the shopping.

A party wishing to visit Northampton or go out for a drive as we sometimes did when we had visitors, could hire a wagonette or brake from Jefcoate’s the local baker who had them for hire. Mr Jefcoate also had a fly drawn by two grey horses, Prince and Trilby, as well as a fine horse drawn hearse for hire.

As I walked to school I often saw

the lacemakers wearing starched white aprons sitting at the door of their cottage with their pillows, twisting their bobbins. I was fascinated by the twisting of the bobbins and the “sticking a pin”. Some of the smaller patterns were: the fan, the running river, and the spider. The patterns were pricked out on a strip of parchment. Great pride was taken in the pillows and the prettiest prints were used to cover them and for the cloths, and the prettiest beads for weighting the bobbins. The lace was at that time bought mostly by Mrs Chettle, a farmer’s wife who lived at “The Beeches”. She was a lace buyer and paid as little as twopence a yard

for some lace. [John Chettle was the farmer at Beech House Farm, he was a churchwarden and member of the Parish Council for many years. His grave in the cemetery is marked by a beautiful, hand carved, oak cross.] I came to know one of the lacemakers very well. She was Mrs Wootton who made lace for several members of the Royal family and some to trim the clothes of the present Queen when she was a small child. I recall Mrs Wootton telling me that she was twice widowed and left with a family of six, four boys and two girls to bring up on six shillings a week. To provide for the family she went out to work for a shilling a day and made lace at home. Mrs Chettle sometimes held lacemaking schools to encourage the making of pillow lace. My mother went to one of these schools. Mrs Chettle also ran a clothing club for the villagers. At certain times of the year the amount entered on the card could be spent. An outing to Stony Stratford or Towcester to spend the “Club Card” was an event looked forward to by many families.

Later a coal club was formed by some of the villagers, and after a time they were enterprising enough to buy their own railway coal truck. This club flourished for many years until the ill-health of the secretary, Mr A. Lambert, and the rationing of coal made it impossible to carry on.

Jefcoate’s fly with the two horses, Prince and Trilby. [Source: Jack Clamp]

Mr and Mrs Chettle in their summerhouse at The Beeches around 1900. [Mrs Mary Nunnari]

Many of the cottages had a pig sty and large pots of pig food were always cooking on the old black grates. Pig killing days were red letter days to the owners and their friends.

There were many tasty delicacies to put on the table such as black puddings, faggots, chitterlings, home made lard, bone puddings and bone pies. The pigs were killed at home and we children loved to watch the singeing process. The pig was placed in a pile of straw, the straw was set alight, and the flames leapt high.

The owners would sometimes canvas the village for orders for the home killed pork, or they would cure it for bacon. Huge sides of bacon and large hams could be seen hanging on the walls. Some people were the proud possessors of a salting lead in which the bacon was salted. This they would lend round to their friends.

Large quantities of home made wine were made from cowslips, dandelions, sloes, potatoes, elderberries, plums etc. Large red pans of wine, with a piece of toast floating on the top could often be seen under the parlour table going through the process of fermenting. It was then stored in large stone jars, and when friends called a glass of wine was always offered.

There were many wandering visitors passing through the village. Vagrants on their way to spend the night in the workhouse at Yardley

Gobion carried a tin can and often called at the houses asking for boiling water to make tea. After spending the night in the workhouse they had to break stones for road mending before starting on the road again. There was a dancing bear led by its owner on a long chain, the horse drawn gypsy caravans with their wares to sell, and the barrel organ complete with monkey holding a cap to collect the pennies: these paid regular visits. A blind man (Blind Barley) played a concertina and was led by his dog; an old soldier with only one arm sang lustily, “Three cheers for the red white and blue”. They came at regular

intervals and we always gave them pennies.

The old cattle drovers who brought the cattle from the markets to the butcher’s were familiar figures and when the poor frightened beasts were driven through the village we children scattered and got inside a garden gate. I remember by name two of these drovers, “Towcester Toff” and Tom Nicholls. Tom Nicholls father was “Sooty” Nicholls the local chimneysweep. He would walk from Yardley Gobion and sweep the chimney for three pence.

A travelling theatre occasionally came into the Reindeer yard, and performed such plays as “Murder in the Red Barn”. I remember also a travelling cinematograph show, which presented “From the Manger to the Cross”. The Watling Street was a very different scene with the horse traffic, the early cars and the steam engines. Lyons Tea vans were pulled by these engines and they stopped at the brook to draw water. I remember the day when the thatched roof of Mr C. Stewart’s farmhouse was set on fire by a spark from one of these engines. We watched the fire engine drawn by horses arrive. Thethatcher at that time was a familiar sight, renewing the thatched roofs. These have almost disappeared, six remaining.

There was then a thatched public

Walter Wise who lived on the Watling Street pictured in his garden about 1900 with his pigs. [Mrs Mary Nunnari]

Pages from “Memories of a Villager” by Hilda Faux.

house in the Lower End known as “The Blue Ball” which had the unusual sign of a red heart above a blue ball and bore the Latin inscription “Cor Supra Mundum”. [Lower End is now known as Church End.] I was told by an old lady who had lived there about 1895 – 1900 that it was thought that there was only one other sign like it. (It is, I believe, still [in the 1950s] in the possession of Capt. Atkinson of Cosgrove Priory.) Mr James Bryant, the first policeman in the village, was also licensee of this inn. The blacksmith’s shop was always and still remains [in the 1950s] a place of interest. The blacksmith Mr Sydney Smith was one of a family of blacksmiths, his father and brother also working at the forge. We saw the horses being taken there to be shod, and to be roughed in the bad weather. Now [in the 1950s] there are few horses and the blacksmith, Mr John Smith, is occupied with mending farm implements and doing wrought iron work. A fine piece of his work is the seat standing [even to this day] on the piece of grass near “The Mansion” [now known as Potterspury House].

Whilst writing of horses I must mention the fine stallions which walked through the village on their way from farm to farm. These were beautiful creatures, well groomed and their tails and manes plaited and braided with coloured braids. We all

ran to see one pass or to watch it when it halted in The Anchor yard and the man in charge still holding it would call for a mug of beer. [The Anchor was for many years the village’s favourite pub. It was demolished in the 1960s.] We saw the followers of the Grafton Hunt in their hunting pink pass through the village on their way to and from the meet. The hounds were often brought through the village when being exercised. Some of the local farmers “walked” a hound puppy. The puppy was kept until the Puppy Show and then returned. A prize was given for

The Blue Ball Inn

The premises of the Blue Ball Inn, reputedly dating from the 16th century, still stand at 6 Church End not far from the church. It is believed to have closed as a pub in about 1912. To the right of the main building is the brewhouse. To the left, older pictures show stables once used for the duke’s horses during church services. Sam Gibbard remembers his father telling of coming over from Puxley to watch gipsies dance and play the fiddle outside. Although little is known about its days as a pub, it is remembered for its curious name and even more curious sign: a picture of the world, painted a bluish colour (not dissimilar to the Earth’s appearance as viewed from space!) with a small red heart above it. Beneath the picture was the Latin inscription Cor Supra Mundum (‘Heart above the world’).

Mr and Mrs Fairchild of The Cottage, Poundfield Road, about to take an excursion on their motorised three-wheeler in the early 1900s. [Mrs Mary Nunnari]

Lower End with the sign of the Blue Ball Inn visible in front of the stables in the early 1900s. [Mrs Mary Nunnari]

The Red Lion Inn

Not much is known of the Red Lion on Watling Street in its days as an inn. It was still an inn in the early 20th century, but has long been known as Sunnyside Farm. Dick Bailey, the last farmer, knew the small building at the rear as the brewhouse. There were still pipes for cleaning barrels in the 1940s.

the best puppies.

There were certain days that we all looked forward to:

B OXING D AY , when the brass band from Yardley Gobion came round and always played “The Mistletoe Bough”. They called at many houses for a glass of home made wine.

GOOD FRIDAY, when after the service in church it was the custom for everyone to go to the woods to gather primroses, and there meet people from all around the district.

EASTER MONDAY, when we watched the people going along the Watling Street in horse drawn brakes, wagonettes, gigs, etc. on their way to Towcester races, which were then held only once a year. We would patiently wait to see them return, when those who had been lucky would often throw pennies for the children to pick up.

MAY DAY at Yardley Gobion, when we went to see the May Queen crowned and to watch the traditional maypole and Morris dances. Until recently there was no May festival in this village. It was started by the local WI.

R OGATION S UNDAY , when we followed the vicar and the choir after evening service to the fields and allotments to bless the crops.

WHIT TUESDAY and WEDNESDAY were “club holidays”: Tuesday, the Oddfellows Club, and Wednesday, The Old Benefit Club. These “holidays” were held in the field called Tattnell. In the afternoon there were such attractions as the village band playing rousing tunes and a stall where you could buy ginger snap and rock. There were races and a greasy pole with a leg of mutton at the top

for the one who could get to the top. There was also a revolving wooden horse, which you mounted at the tail and endeavoured to reach the head. It was fun to watch. The competitor would mount and carefully scotch along, but before he could reach the head, the body twisted round and he was thrown off.

On either A UGUST 1 ST or 2 ND we always walked into Stony Stratford to visit the fair held for two days on the Market Square. Then there were the “Mummers”. They would come any time between OCTOBER 31ST and PLOUGH MONDAY (the Monday after January 6th). The “Mummers” were a band of men out to make merry. They were dressed chiefly in paper, paper skirts, paper streamers, hideous masks and headdresses. Often they were in the form of animal heads. I did not like the “Mummers”, but I believe if they came to the house you were more or less obliged to ask them in.

I remember Major and Mrs Brougham who lived at “The Mansion”. He read the lessons in church on Sunday morning and he founded the first troop of Boy Scouts in the village in 1912. Their daughter married Viscount Ipswich, who was killed in a flying accident in the 191418 war. She was the mother of the ninth Duke of Grafton, killed in a motor cycling accident when he was 21. She gave the war memorial in the church in memory of her husband

Harvest time at Sunnyside Farm. [Mrs Mary Nunnari]

The Anchor Inn in its heyday. [Mrs Mary Nunnari]

and the window above, depicting “The Crucifixion”, was given by the village as a memorial to those who died in the 1914-18 war.

Mrs Newton and her family lived at Pury Lodge, and were often seen in the village. (The Newton family were co-founders of Winsor & Newton, the art material manufacturer.) After her death it was bought by Mr G. Beale who became Sheriff of Northamptonshire. He built the chapel in the grounds, which was used as a Catholic chapel. The house is now used as a school for maladjusted children.

In my childhood whole families including uncles, aunts and cousins could be seen walking out together on Sundays, and the walk along behind Pury Lodge to the tree known as the “Queen’s Oak”, where Elizabeth Woodville was supposed to have met Edward IV, was a favourite one. The summers then seemed hotter and the winters more severe. We picnic’d in the hayfields and played around and jumped the haycocks. My friends and I always took the lace that we were knitting on fine steel pins with very fine cotton and many a needle was lost in the hay.

I saw the gleaners at harvest time setting off with their prams and trucks, with a pocket apron tied

around them in which to glean the short ears. Some families gleaned enough corn to keep them in flour all the winter. The corn could be taken to the village mill, then worked by the old water wheel and owned by Mr Busby, who would grind it on payment. The villagers also collected acorns which they sold for pig food.

Often in winter the snow was deep and we waited for the snow plough to come down from Wakefield before we could go to school, and there seemed to be long spells of skating and sliding on the Wakefield lakes. People came from over a large area to skate there, and on bright

moonlight nights there were often supper parties on the ice. The local skaters who could cut a figure of eight were much admired. A chair was provided to help those not quite so proficient. During the cold weather soup could be bought at certain times from Hill House (now Greystone Lodge), the home of the estate manager of the Duke of Grafton. It was sent down from Wakefield and people went with cans to buy it.

I remember the large band of young men who set off so light heartedly one morning to join Lord Kitchener’s army, and the Belgian family, Madame De Keyser and her three children, Isidore, Alphonse and Marie, whom the village adopted in the 1914-18 war. They were a sad family who had seen the father shot by German soldiers. Many of the villagers made weekly contributions to provide them with an income. They had their own home and lived in the cottage now known as 47, High Street. ‘Madame’ was a good needlewoman and able to take in dressmaking. They returned to Belgium after the war.

Our postal address in those days was Potterspury, Stony Stratford, Bucks, and our letters were brought by a postman who walked from Stony Stratford to the village, and on to deliver at Wakefield Lodge. The village post office has been kept by the Osborne family for many years. I can recall three generations serving there.

The drawing room at Hill House (now Greystone Lodge) in about 1900. [Mrs Mary Nunnari]

An early ‘pink day’ when clove pinks were sold in aid of Northampton General Hospital. (Alex Wootton]

For many years they also ran a wheelwright’s and undertaker’s business.

The only newspapers we received during the week were the Northampton papers. These were brought by a small lame man, Mr “Georgie” Webb, who lived at Yardley Gobion. He cycled to Castlethorpe station to collect the papers and then delivered them to both villages. On Sunday Mr Wamsley came from Stony Stratford in a pony cart.

The villagers have always been fond of sport and there was a football match played every year between Potterspury and Yardley to decide the fate of the “Watercress Cup”. It was only a wooden cup, but was coveted by both villages. There were also cricket and tennis clubs.

About 1916 the first of the “Pink Days” was organised by Mr A. Wise of Blackwell End, who grew large quantities of clove pinks in his garden. These were made into button holes and sold in the neighbouring towns and villages in aid of Northampton General Hospital. Then followed the Hospital Fetes which for many years raised large sums of money for the hospital. Before these efforts a collection hadbeen made in the village annually.

The first company of Girl Guides was formed in the village in 1917 and in about 1919 a bus service was started

on Wednesdays and Saturdays from Northampton to Stony Stratford by Grose’s Ltd. This passed through the village and transport out of the village became easier. The six o’clock bus on Saturday evening, an open double deck, solid tyred bus, could be seen leaving the village loaded to its fullest capacity. There were no restrictions, and passengers sat on every step of the stairs and even on the ledge which protruded over the driver’s seat. The return journey from Stony Stratford was at 9 p.m.

In 1918 the seventh Duke of Grafton died and soon afterwards the estate was sold. Many of the tenants bought their farms and cottages and became land and property owners (1920). Later Wakefield Lodge was sold and the quiet dignity of the Grafton family passed away, and the bond which had bound Wakefield and the village so closely together was broken. In 1920 the house was bought by Lord Hillingdon and modernised. It was later sold to Mr Gee who demolished a large part of it and it is now [in the late 1950s] owned by Mr Richmond-Watson.

Memories of times around the 1920s

Mrs Irene Davison

I am 87 years old (in 1999) and lived all of my childhood in the village but as things were at that time we girls had no option other than to go into domestic service at the age of 14 when we left school and the boys had little option other than the available farm work around. Potterspury really was a village then, everybody knew everybody else from one end of the village to the other. Although it is still known as ‘the village’ that is in name only, as I am sure that more than three quarters of the people do not know the others. With more new buildings and new younger people, the divide becomes greater as time goes on.

Most of the village consisted of small, thatched cottages with just one room downstairs and two upstairs, no bath, no running water, no electric light, only a small fire grate with a tiny oven and a small tank at the side to heat the water which had to be carried in buckets from a stand pump in the lane. Most people had a large tin bath which used to hang from a nail in the wall at the back of the house, so we did have a bath, but only once a week. Water had to be heated on the fire in kettles and saucepans to get enough to fill the tub, and, with families of seven or eight children, which were the norm in those days, the cleanest had to get in first and so on until the dirtiest was the last in.

This then, was life in our village in the early years of the century. We will now turn the clock forward some 1020 years and read of Mrs Irene Davison’s recollections of village life in her younger days.

Another unhygenic thing was the toilets, or closets as they were known, which had buckets that had to be emptied once a week, but the powers that be were considerate enough to make sure that this chore was done late at night because of the foul stench. The men who undertook this unsavoury job were allowed an ounce of tobacco to enable them to smoke and try to alleviate some of the stench. The children had a name for this contraption, shaped like a tank and pulled along by a horse, it was called “the sweet old violet cart”, and you couldn’t get anything less like violets

Harvest at Beech House Farm in the early 1900s.

[Mrs Mary Nunnari]

anywhere. Apparently it didn’t do the men who operated this cart much harm as they lived to be over eighty. I don’t think they were paid very much and certainly not danger money.

Although the village was small it boasted about six pubs. Two were before my time, but I remember four main ones, the Old Talbot, the Anchor, the Cock, and the Reindeer, each having their own clientele and of course there was the usual friendly rivalry between them all. There was also a good deal of drunkenness at weekends. Most of the men had quite a large back garden and were mostly self-sufficient in the way of vegetables, fruit, etc. Even though they worked hard all week and often had to walk miles to work (as there was no transport), they also worked hard on their gardens, and I suppose they thought that they were entitled to get drunk at weekends, but I don’t think there were ever any fights. There was no television, and no birth control aids, and a family of seven or eight was the norm. In fact a relation of ours had fifteen, the youngest didn’t know their eldest brothers, who had been out to work since the age of 13. As soon as they reached that age they had to find a job: it was one less mouth to feed, and even if they only earned a few shillings it helped.

There were quite a few organisations in the village then, Potterspury even had its own brass band, which always turned out on

festive occasions and paraded through the village. There was a thriving Boy Scout troop and Cub Scouts, and what was then known as the Girls’ Friendly Society. The Church was represented by the Band of Hope (The Church of England Temperance Society) encouraging villagers to forsake the demon drink!

In our days as children you could walk from end to end of the village and not see a car, how else would we have been able to play with our whips and tops in the road and bowl our hoops along. There was certainly no lack of exercise then, we spent nearly the whole time out of doors in the summer, walking through the woods, collecting wood for the fires to save coal, and we found joy in walking

through a field of buttercups where you got your shoes covered in the yellow pollen and we would pick violets from the hedgerows. Later in the year we had fun picking blackberries. These things mean nothing to many children of today, they would probably say “How boring!”. They have so much today, but are they any happier than we were with our simple pleasures, and no spending money? We were all in the same boat and there was no jealousy.

Another ritual which was peculiar to this village as far as I know, was when the horse racing was held at Towcester. It was an event that only happened twice a year at that time and the one that affected us was the Easter Monday event. We used to watch the wagonettes and the horse drawn carriages and pony traps etc. parade through the village on their way to Towcester. We thought they were toffs as they were the only ones who could afford to go to places like that. When it was time for their return from the races, I think the whole village would line both sides of the Watling Street and put up a rousing cheer to every carriage that appeared, and if the occupants of the vehicles had had a good day with some wins at the races they would throw a handful of pennies into the crowd and we would scramble for them. I often thought the “toffs” would think that there was not just one village idiot but a whole village

The row of old cottages on Watling Street that stood where Churchill Motors is now. [Mrs Mary Nunnari]

The Band of Hope in the early 1900s.

[Mrs Mary Nunnari]

full of them! But it was a fun thing for us and we looked forward to that event as well as a chance to pick up a few pennies.

Another annual event to which everyone looked forward was the British Legion Fete held in one of the fields next to the Watling Street. That was a big “do” as the village brass band headed a procession through the village, next came the men of the British Legion, then the troops of boy scouts and cubs with an assortment of bugles and drums. They must have made a hell of a noise, but it was all excitement to the crowd of kids following, running and jumping in time with the marchers.

Each of the men took charge of a sideshow including the greasy pole. This was a pole about ten feet high, planted firmly in the ground and covered with inches of thick cart grease. Whoever managed to climb to the top was the winner of a piglet given by a member of the team. That was a real win as the piglet was fed and reared and then killed at an appropriate time, and provided food for a family for months to come. There was always a good atmosphere of friendly banter amongst the men.

Funerals were appropriately respected by everyone, as the mourning family congregated at the home and the coffin was placed on

the bier carried by four of the funeral directors and then paraded in silence from the home to the church. Anyone passing by at the time would immediately stand still with bowed head. Boys and men doffed their caps and stood still until the cortege passed by. There were no cars in those days.

Sundays were also revered and observed very strictly. Children were

not allowed to play rumbustious games or behave in a disrespectful manner, a quiet walk down to the church – which in those days was quite full – then it was Sunday school for the children in the afternoon and church again in the evening. There was always a full choir – boys and men, ladies and girls. After church there would more often than not be a sedate walk up to the woods or fields with our parents: no playing or mucking about in case we made our Sunday clothes dirty – anyway it was Sunday and that was to be respected and observed.

In those days there were no fridges, milk was brought in large pails to your own door, served in half or one pints from measures hanging from the side of the pail. Bakers brought bread, unwrapped and without any thought of hygiene and yet I am sure there was less food poisoning than there is now. Butchers hung up their meat in open windows and displayed other cuts on the open shelf which attracted a good supply of flies. We just washed it, not knowing if the water was polluted.

At least most people were fairly

The Night Soil Cart

We have already heard from Mrs Davison about the ‘night soil’ cart and its nocturnal progress around the village.

Prior to 1946 a horse-drawn cart was used to collect the contents of village privies and transport them for emptying on nearby fields. The horse and cart were stabled at Charlie Foster’s on Watling Street; Will Atkins and Harry Sumners had the job of emptying the buckets. It is said that Harry used to delight in catching people ‘on the throne’. To compensate for the fragrance which accompanied their work these men were provided with a tobacco allowance to divert the attention of their noses from their work!

Once a motor vehicle ran into the cart on the A5 necessitating a less than pleasant clean-up operation before any traffic could pass by. On another occasion it is said that Will dropped his jacket into the cart, and was trying to retreive it, when his mate consoled him saying, “Don’t worry, it’s only an old jacket.” Will is said to have replied, “I’m not worried about the jacket –it’s the sandwiches in the pocket I’m after.”

In 1946 the old cart was replaced by a motorised version. Whilst this meant less arduous work for the men it didn’t do a lot to reduce the smell. Relief came in 1954 when, much to everyone’s delight, the mains sewers were laid in the village. One local custom, which is unlikely to be sadly missed, passed into history.

A brass band procession along the High Street in the early years of the century. Notice Woods farmhouse (The Cottage Stores) on the left. [Mrs Mary Nunnari]

sure of a good Sunday roast, thanks to the two bakers in the village (one in the High Street, the other in Blackwell End). It was the custom to allow anyone who wanted to prepare their joint surrounded by good wholesome Yorkshire pudding in a large baking tin, to bring their dinner up to the bakehouse to be baked in the large bread ovens. The charge for this was one or two pence and they were duly collected at the appropriate time ready for the Sunday lunch along with a goodly share of home grown vegetables from the back garden.

We gain a further insight into the nature of local employment and village life in pre-war years from Henry Stewart’s recollections.

Some recollections of times around the 1930s

Henry Stewart

I was born in 1917 in Cock Lane (now Sanders Lane). The houses had no numbers in those days. My parents, James and Charlotte, had also been born in the village. I was the eldest, and I had four younger sisters.

I attended the old school in the High Street and left in 1931, when I was 14 and went to work at the gravel pits in Cosgrove; now the Lakes and Caravan Park. Mr Whiting was the owner in those days. I was in charge of two ponies, with which I would take gravel from the pit to the washer. It was then graded by riddles and put into large piles. My wages were £1-10s (£1.50) per week, and out of that I was stopped two shillings per week for my Insurance Stamp. I stayed in that job for two years. It was hard, cold work, as I worked in wet conditions all the time. When I was 16, I was employed in the gardens at Wakefield Lodge, working under Mr Lampard, the head gardener. That was a lovely job, but the wages were poor. I was still only getting £1-10s a week when I left, aged 20, but I couldn’t ask for a rise, as jobs were very hard to get. I did a few other labouring jobs around the village until 1940, when I went to work for Iron Oxide in Deanshanger.

I stayed there until I retired in 1982, when I was 65.

My family and I moved to 37 Watling Street in 1936, and my parents ran a shop from the house. We used to sell groceries – tea, sugar, flour, sweets, and such like. In those days the customers would tap on the small window at the front of the house and my mother would open the window to serve them. After a while

Local Dialect

If you live in Pury you don’t have afternoon tea, you ‘ave a bit a cairke an a cup a tay in a bairsun!’ Bill Druce, who lived at Holly House, Watling Street, used to tell the tale. “Oy wen owt fer a wark wun day un oy were a runnin down the strit wen oy met a dug a follerin me. Oy tuk it um we me un chairned it ter the bed powust wee a bit a string, un wen oy woke up in the mornin, theyer it wor –gorn!”

Mrs Aggie Bason, who lived in a cottage fronting onto the footpath of the Watling Street where Churchill’s Motors (next to Holly House) is today, had quite a broad accent and delighted in telling this tale. “Oy were a sittin ere in the front a me fyre wen the room suddenly went dark. Oy looked up un see this great fairse ut the winder, it were un ole tramp! It frit me ter death!” (Aggie lived on to tell the tale.)

she decided that it was undignified to leave people standing outside in the road, so she let them come around to the back door.

Then they decided to expand the business, so they bought two fish fryers second-hand, and started a fish and chip shop from one of the two wooden sheds which still stand in the back garden. The lads used to come around for fish and chips when the Anchor pub closed, and if the weather was bad my mother would let them sit in the other shed, out of the cold, to eat their food. We didn’t think much about it in those days, but frying in that wooden shed must have been a terrible fire hazard!

One of the highlights of the week was the Pury Brass Band. They used to practice in the Cock Inn during the week, and then, on the Sunday

The butcher’s shop in the early part of the 20th century. [Source: John Giddings]

The Reindeer Inn

Now the premises of Reindeer Antiques Ltd, an antiques dealer of international repute, the Reindeer was until the mid 1960s a pub, owned by the Northampton Brewery Company. It had long been a coaching inn with a large yard, stables, coach houses and had its own maltings. Records of the 18th century show churchwardens holding meetings there. In the late 19th century, before the Parish Council existed, this was where the Waywardens met to appoint the Constable and carry out other duties which are now the responsibility of the Parish Council.

Beryl Gibbard and Keith Solesbury recall: “When Appleton kept the Reindeer, they used to have a band on a Sunday night on the lawn. It was Duggie Blunt’s Band. One day when they put all the instruments down to go inside and have a

drink, Ginger Lambert tipped half a pint of beer in Duggie Blunt’s saxophone. Well, when Duggie went to play it he couldn’t get a sound out of it! Duggie wouldn’t play there any more.”

“There was another old boy who used to get in the Reindeer, Gerry Richardson, who used to live in one of the cottages just below the Anchor. When Gerry came in for a couple of pints on a Saturday he would wear the biggest flower on his coat you ever did see. As soon as he had his couple of pints he would put his trilby on upside down and start dancing. Somebody tipped half a pint of beer in the hat one night.”

Reindeer Inn on Watling Street in the early 1900s. [Mrs Mary Nunnari]

Beryl’s husband Sam remembers the occasion when a big Guinness tanker crashed on to its side against the Reindeer and poured Guinness into the bar!

evenings when the weather was good, they would assemble on the grass bank opposite the Anchor Inn on the A5 and play for an hour or so to an audience usually made up of the locals.

Before the Second World War, a man named Freddy Howard used to live in one of the cottages in Blackwell End (before the council houses were built). He owned a little Ford truck, and on Saturday mornings he would drive over to Castlethorpe railway station, and load up with coal, which he would then sell around the village for a shilling (5p) per hundredweight (50 kg). When he finished selling the first load, he would return to Castlethorpe, load up and then go to Paulerspury in the afternoon, and repeat the process. Talking of coal, my parents told me about “Potterspury Coal Club”. Village residents would pay a shilling per week into the Coal Club, and then, when they had paid in £1, they would be entitled to collect a ton of coal, which would help to see them through the winter. So many of the old ways have

disappeared. When I was a youngster, it was customary on a Sunday morning for my mother to send me around to the bakehouse in the High Street, with our Sunday joint and a bowl of batter to make the Yorkshire pudding. Mr Jefcoate would charge 2d (1p) to cook the joint and make the Yorkshire in the bread oven. The men would go to the pub for a pint

on Sunday lunch time, and would then collect their joint from the bakehouse when it was cooked. On more than one occasion, the men would stay too long in the pub and later return home with a much smaller joint than the one they took in, but if you went in early, you sometimes got one bigger than you took in. There used to be the odd dispute about this,

Sunday roasts at Jefcoate’s bakery.

[Milton Keynes Museum]

The

and if news was fairly scarce in the village that week, a short story about the dispute would appear in the local newspaper, The Wolverton Express

At about this time, Dolly Russell’s father came to the village. Older villagers may remember him giving rides to the children in return for jam jars or old rags. We are fortunate therefore in having Dolly’s own account of her life as a child and their arrival in Potterspury.

A life with horses in the 1930s and 1940s

Dolly Russell

My Dad, John Hammond, was a horse slaughterman: my grandad was blind and ran a merry-go-round. They came from Dorking and Dad married Bertha, my Mum, and they had 14 children. Mum was ill with tuberculosis and the doctor told Dad she would only live if she had an outdoor life so he bought a caravan and some horses and gave rides to children. Then Dad decided to go back to slaughtering and we settled up by the cutting at Dunstable when I was four years old (in 1929) with my brothers and sisters, Kit, Tom, Dora and Stan. They built a big slaughterhouse far enough away from a built up area as you had to be with horse slaughtering. You had a deep pit where all the blood went and when we brought the animals home we used to string them up and bleed them and then load them on trolleys and take them to Redbourn where they went over to Belgium for human consumption during the war.

Dad also collected bottles and jars. We had a big tree outside with bottles hanging up there and jars and old antique bits of iron and stuff and he became known as Jam Jar Jack. He was a character, a loveable rogue, and he used to say to us that whatever he’d done he’d never hurt anyone and he’d never got caught. Then my brother,

Stan, who used to look after all the carts and lorries, being 18, had to go in the army (in 1939). I was 14 or something, I’d left school and I wanted to join the forces to be a nurse but Dad wouldn’t let me. He made me go and take a test to shoot a captive bolt which is like a revolver which shoots a bolt into a horse’s or cow’s head and kills it. So I had to do Stan’s job while he was away in the army for six years. It was hard work, I’d only just left school then and we kept the business going with the trolleys and then Dad started buying horses and bought land near Bletchley which is where he started the Bottle Dump. (One of the roundabouts on the outskirts of Bletchley is named Bottledump Roundabout.) My Dad and his mate, Johnny Bowen, used to go down the New Forest, buy wild horses and bring them home and we’d have a ring and we used to break them in. I had a little one, a tiny pony, and we bought a little trolley thing for it and gave the kids rides. We used to go out with all the 23 ponies and that’s how I came to live round here.

We used to travel miles and we’d come to a village like this and go to the school and see the teachers and say, “Right, we’ll give the children rides, three jars or threepence a ride.” We used to take the jam jars home, wash them and take them back to the jam jar factory at Redbourn and that helped the war effort because bottles

and jars were worth a lot of money. We came out here with the ponies one night; we drove from the Bottle Dump, and we came to this village through Puxley way, Dad driving a trolley, cart or trap of some sort and I was in a Victorian trap, a landau, which dipped in the middle. We used to put a pole in the middle and put a big sheet over at night and sleep in it; we used to put a bed in it, and we’d got 23 horses tied behind. At the turning up near Wakefield along the hedge, Dad said, “We’ll pull in here for the night.” So we put the conveyances on the side and then we had long chains, really long chains, on each pony or horse and you’d get under the hedge and fasten it. You’d measure it out so that they didn’t touch all along the hedge, all 23 of them.

At night time, Dad said, “Let’s go across to the pub (the Reindeer), I know old Charlie Foster.” Now Charlie Foster was a character; he kept rabbits down his yard. Well we went and had a drink and went back and went to bed. When we woke up next morning all the horses were missing; it was real funny. So the next night Charlie Foster said, “You can put them in my field,” That was the field by the brook where the big house is now, but he didn’t tell Dad there was no wall alongside the brook and the next morning when we got up all the horses were gone again. Well

Dolly Russell seen here with her father’s cart

[Dolly Russell]

apparently, I’ve been told by the villagers, they came galloping through the village up Cock Lane with all those chains clanking and frightened the life out of the villagers. Dad told me to bike back home, because we always had a bike with us, and get Betty, that was the pony we also had, put her in the flat cart and go and look for them. So I biked back to the Bottle Dump which is 14 miles from here, and got Betty and put the bike on the flat cart – we used to build all the carts and things that we used. Anyway, someone had spotted them behind May’s Cafe and down near where the fish farm is now and we had to go and round them all up. The village talked about that for ages and ages, they’d never seen anything like it, they’d never seen so many horses together anyway. For about three months Charlie’s was our stable place rather than going home every night and we went to every little village for miles around, and then we’d come back to Charlie’s and sleep in the landau. Dad used to go down to Charlie’s yard to feed the rabbits. Dad, Freddie Osborne and Chuck Broad,

who were young fellows when I first came here, used to congregate down by the Anchor. I weren’t a bad looking person then, I had hair right down to my waist, I could ride and I could drive and the village boys hadn’t seen anything like that, you know, a woman in jodhpurs and riding boots, and to them I was a novelty I suppose. I got to know Bill and he used to bike over, sometimes I’d be at Aylesbury, Banbury, or Bicester, but eventually we got together and got married. We came back here to live in 1946 in a tiny little cottage with Bill’s parents. The door was narrow, the windows had little leaded panes, you had to have an oil lamp on all day and we went up a rickety staircase to the one bedroom and that was where I had my eldest son. It was on the A5 between the old row of houses next to the brook and the Anchor; there used to be Ethel Richardson, then me, Violet Blunt and her husband, then Ada Mason and then the Anchor.

My eldest son’s name is William John Henry, but when Dad came over he looked at him (he was in a drawer; we couldn’t get a cot), and he said,

Wartime in Potterspury

Like most English villages, Potterspury was affected by the two world wars which blighted the 20th century. We have relatively little information on the effects of the First World War. We do know that the war memorial in St Nicholas Church records the loss of 20 men from the village. The Parish Council had a lengthy discussion on how villagers should be warned of an imminent bombing raid by the German Zeppelin airships. It was suggested that the church bells be rung, but this was considered unwise as it was thought it could also warn the Zeppelin pilot that he had been spotted!

During the Second World War the likelihood of bombing here may have seemed remote, but at nearby Wolverton one local school master whose Austin Seven was his pride and joy was reputed to have camouflaged his little wooden garage! Bombing became more of a reality when a stray German bomber jettisoned a bomb which fell at Furtho damaging the church slightly. Keith Solesbury remembers hiding under a table when that bomb was dropped, and going over next day to see if there was any damage. He also remembers watching a plane come down on fire at Yardley Gobion; it was crewed by Canadian airmen on a training flight. Some bombs were dropped on the Wakefield estate and there are still craters visible by Bears Copse near The Kennels. A landmine fell on a dutch barn at Paulerspury which caused piglets to run amok through the village. It is thought that most of these bombs were jettisoned by planes returning from the raids on Coventry or Birmingham.

Winter Sports

Before the Second World War skating on the Wakefield lakes was very popular and on cold winter evenings cars would gather round the lake to provide light for the skaters. The mill dam was also very popular for skating and when snow fell the kids would all take their toboggans up Duffers Hill and sledge down to the brook.

“Hello, rusty balls” so it stuck and he’s been called Rusty ever since. I kept going on at Bill to go and get us a council house and they started building down here (Furtho Lane) and for two years I walked down here every day, I saw every one of these houses built, though I didn’t know which one I was going to have.

The first villager I really knew was Ruth Salmon, she was married to Vic Salmon who now lives down Sanders Lane. I was walking down the street one day, Dad had bought me an old maroon coloured pram and I was so proud because in those days you couldn’t get prams because it was wartime, and this tall girl went by me wearing a scarf, she always wore a headscarf. She kept looking at me and I mean I don’t know anyone in the village so I looked at her and said, “Am I wearing something? Have I got something belonging to you?” Well she walked off, but she knew me the next time we met. I weren’t used to being stared at like that, you know, looking me up and down as if Iwas a freak, I think it was the pram really! Well I got to know Ruth and we were very good friends. Then I moved, but she got a house down here first and helped me a lot with the kids (Dolly has six sons and a daughter).

Some more recollections of family and village life around about the time of the Second World War come from Joan Goff.

The Anchor Inn

Kept for several generations by the Pratt family, the Anchor Inn, at the corner of the High Street and Watling Street, was reckoned to be the village’s most popular pub. It was very much the centre of action. (In the late 19th and early 20th centuries there were a good many more houses on Watling Street and very many fewer in the centre of the village.) The football team used to meet there, and for a time had changing rooms there.

Memories of times around the 1940s

Joan Goff

When I was a child there were a number of shops in the village: Mr Hemsworth’s in Blackwell End (now nos. 58 and 60) and Aunt Lil’s which was in a thatched cottage also in Blackwell End (now Ashwick) where Mum (Daisy Tapp) would go and get her groceries with the thirty shillings a week that my Dad (Eden Tapp) gave her. Then there was the one in the row of cottages along by Soper’s farm, it was a little sweet shop where you could book the bus to London. There was a farm where the Cottage Stores is now, and the farmer used to give broth to the poor, he made it from sheep’s heads, and many a time my Mum would send me down there for some. There was also a shop in Furtho Lane and where I live now in Blackwell End was an orchard and opposite were allotments.

Mum had 12 children, six boys and six girls and nine of them were born while they were in a two bedroom cottage in Blackwell End. She took in washing to help out, she did all the washing for the Nelson cafe (now the Super Sausage Cafeteria). She’d wash all the filthy tea towels and she’d worry that she couldn’t get them

white because they were so dirty. She’d get a penny for each tea towel. During the war she did all the officers’ washing from Wakefield when the soldiers were there. The batman would bring the washing down to her. She also used to do all the laying out in the village. She’d know when someone was dying and would say she’d be got up that night to go round and wash and dress the body. She’d put pennies on the eyes to hold them shut and she’d tie up the chin if it fell open. She would then tend the body for seven days because in those days it stayed in the house until the funeral

It was also the traditional starting place for many processions marking national events. In its latter years it was owned by Phipps and Co. Brewery (Northampton), and the last landlord was Archie Bushell who moved when the pub closed to the White Hart at Grafton Regis. The Anchor was demolished in 1965 as part of road improvements at the junction of the A5 and the High Street.

and she’d see the body into the coffin. Then she’d help with the funeral tea and she’d get half a crown for doing all that. She’d insist that the body had to look nice and my Dad would say “I don’t know why you do that” and she’d reply “It’s the living that hurt you, the dead will never hurt you.” She didn’t believe in ghosts.

Mum was a wonderful caring person who would always help you if she could; she knew what it was like to be poor. She also used to help the midwife, Nurse Bracken, and the village people would come to her for advice because she’d had so many

WI ladies outside the village hall on Rose Queen Day, 1938. Left to right: Mrs Jess Bradbury, Mrs Sinclair, Nancy Tarry, Mrs Mary Tapp, Maud Green, Mrs Cowley, Mrs Sue Onan, Mrs Maycock. Seated: Dorothy Pratt. [Milton Keynes Museum]

The Anchor Inn with members of the Pratt family who ran it for many years. [Hilda Faux’s “Memories”]

children. Many a time young girls would come to her when they were pregnant and she’d talk to them about it, she’d always got time. I never knew her sit still. When she sat down she’d peg a mat or something. She dyed all the material herself and she’d sell the mats for half a crown and give the money to the chapel (URC). She loved to sing and she went to the chapel services. She also worked in the house for Mr Whitehouse who was the minister. We had an old gramophone which we used to put on and she’d sing away. She never let you know when she was down.

My Mum used to take her joint of meat and her pudding to the baker’s to cook. She would have a whole leg of lamb and an enormous pudding and it would all be absolutely gorgeous, she took it to Bill Druce’s farm (now Holly House) because he had a bakehouse where they baked bread. Bill Druce used to say he knew which puddings had got too much water in because it was sloppy and came out wet. When people were short of milk they’d make it up with water.

Mum’s hobby was wine making,

she made all sorts and she used to sell it. Even the policeman’s wife used to come and buy it, although it was against the law. She made all sorts of fruit wine, she’d put all the fruit in a bowl, add water and soak it. Then she’d squeeze and strain out all the juice and add the yeast and sugar, and she’d stand it in big stone jars until it was ready to be bottled. They used to come from all over the village to buy it from her.

When Lord Hillingdon was in Wakefield Lodge a group of women from the High Street or Blackwell End would take an old pram up to Wakefield woods. They’d put four stakes, one in each corner, and load it with firewood and the kids would climb on top to be pushed home. Before they left home they’d put the dinner to cook on the range so it would be ready for the menfolk when

Dad’s Army

We are all familiar with the Home Guard through the antics of “Dad’s Army” on television. It was created so that men who were either above or below service age could make their contribution by being ready to repel the invaders should they ever arrive. Potterspury had its own branch as did Yardley Gobion, and here, Doug Holloway remembers some of the lighter moments!

Bert Tapp (later to become Mayor of Milton Keynes) was a younger member of the Home Guard. During one exercise he was “escaping” from his colleagues and asked Syd Holloway whether he could hide in the attic at 78 High Street. Given permission, he clambered up through the trap door. The roof space in these houses was open to all four in the block. As Bert went along he put his foot through Arthur Kingston’s ceiling at no. 74. It is not recorded whether Togo Webb, who was in charge, remarked, “Stupid boy!”

During the war, the Holloway brothers (Syd, Dick and Ken) kept pigs and would regularly go round the village collecting kitchen scraps in some old 40 gallon

oil drums on a hand trolley. One day some of the Home Guard were given the task of “defending” Potterspury House from the rest of the platoon. Syd Holloway turned up with his oil drums on the trolley with “attackers” duly hidden inside them. The defenders said, “Whup Syd” (a traditional Pury greeting), allowing him free access to go in and The Mansion was duly captured! Shades of the wooden horse of Troy!

Potterspury platoon had a wooden hut on the top of the church tower as a lookout post. One day Yardley Gobion Home Guard were to “capture” Potterspury. The Pury platoon were keeping their eyes peeled looking across the fields towards Yardley from their vantage point. The Yardley men marched off via Moor End, Wakefield and Puxley and came in and “captured” Pury from the other direction. Pury said, “It weren’t fair!” At the end of the war, instead of lowering the lookout post to the ground it was unceremoniously thrown off the tower. (No doubt in the television series the warden would have been walking past at the time.)

A view of Church End from the Church tower in the late 1930s. [Milton Keynes Museum]

they came home. They did this five days a week.

Leon’s father [Leon is Joan’s husband] used to entertain when I was a child, he could play any instrument and he was a wonderful magician. He’d have his pockets bulging with pocket tricks with which he’d entertain everyone in the pub. He often entertained at the village hall and I once went to a British Legion Christmas ‘do’ at the village hall and he asked us children what we’d really like; would we like books or cakes or

Gun Law

Beryl Gibbard and Keith Solesbury recall Charlie Webster (Blowie we used to call him) having a .22 rifle, and it used to worry his mother to death. He used to go shooting squirrels. Sergeant Ostle (the village bobby) went down to the Reindeer one day when Blowie was in there. “Come on Charlie” he said, “I know you’ve got that rifle –where is it?” Blowie replied, “No I ain’t”. Ostle went outside and after 5 minutes came back in and said “Alright, Charlie, I’ve been to see your Mum – she told me you’ve got it.” Blowie said, “What the bloody hell she doing, tellin’ you that.” Blowie got fined about £2 for having a rifle. Ostle had had him as easy as that – he’d only stood outside!

sweets? Of course we all shouted “sweets” and he just produced all these sweets out of an empty canister and I thought to myself, “Aren’t that man’s children lucky; they’ve got a father who can produce sweets out of nowhere.” Visiting concert parties used to perform in the maltings behind the Reindeer and they’d stay for three weeks. Strudwick’s Fair used to come to the field in Blackwell End and Mum would find a couple of pennies for us to spend there, which must have been very hard for her. We used to be sent to chapel on Sunday morning, afternoon and evening, but in the afternoon we’d go for sweets to Aunt Lil’s shop. We were allowed a halfpenny worth each which would go on the book. We’d buy something that would last a long time or a halfpenny bag of all the bottoms of the jars.

When I was young I spent all my time with my Mum, we were very close because I only went to school for six months of the year during the winter [Joan has a chronic hereditary skin condition]. In the summer I’d spend between six weeks and three months in Northampton General Hospital every year up until I was 14. Actually I never minded, but when I left school there was no work for people like me with a disability so I never worked. My Mum used to work as a cook at the Old Talbot, so I used to help in the house and do things for her, so she gave me ten shillings a week. Out of that I’d go to the pictures at the Scala in Stony Stratford; the fare on the bus was

The Old Talbot Inn

The Old Talbot is one of the village’s original pubs, a former coaching inn, dating from the 18th century. It was formerly a Hopcroft and Norris (Brackley) pub, taken over by the Northampton Brewery Company. It was expanded in the late 1960s, having a restaurant added. Maurice Coles was landlord for several years and built up a good restaurant trade. After his retirement the pub had a series of managers before being sold by Watney Mann to the Hungry Horse chain. It still serves as a ‘local’ for some villagers, and today the large screen satellite TV is a particular attraction on the days of major sporting occasions.

seven pence return, the pictures, a shilling, I’d pay half a crown a week into a clothing club and I smoked 20 cigarettes a week. I did that until I was married at 20.

When Leon and I got married we had nowhere to live so we moved out of the village for a few years. Our son, David, was about two and a half when we came back and we had nowhere to go then, so Leon went to live with his Mum; David and I lived with my Mum in Blackwell End. Leon used to walk the villages to try and find us somewhere to live, he went to all the farms and to the council and in the end they gave us a little condemned cottage behind the Anchor pub. It had three rooms, one on top of the other, and a wash house out the back with electricity downstairs but nowhere else. It had an old grate with an oven and a primus stove and we had to fetch buckets of water. I had to push the red embers under the oven and I had a hook above for the kettle. You couldn’t bake cakes because you couldn’t trust the temperature of the oven. We moved to a brand new house in Blackwell End when David

A British Legion Christmas dinner in the village hall.

[Source: Mrs Gladys Barby]

was eight at a rent of 18 shillings and ten pence a week.

I used to sing. There were four of us: Terry Tapp, my sister in law, Ann Sharp, my friend, Paula Summers, and myself, and we went along to be in the Henry Fermor concert. We used to go to practice every week with Henry, it was good for a laugh. Henry was in service in London and his Mum used to live in one of the cottages on the A5 by Soper’s farm. When he retired he came back to live here, he was a female impersonator, but in those days the villagers didn’t understand things like that so they used to laugh at him. He wore all this make-up and had big hats with beautiful ostrich feathers, he also had some lovely dresses which must have cost the earth. At one time I had to sing “They try to tell us we’re too young” with two of the village kids sitting on a bench canoodling and I was supposed to split them up. I wore a red chiffon dress covered in sequins, and red shoes. We also sang in the chorus but one night poor Henry stepped back too far and fell off the back of the stage and disappeared. Everyone just screamed with laughter, but he was a real trouper, he struggled back and carried on, he was a lovely man.

Let us return to memories of childhood in the village through a

girl’s eyes during the post-war years. Ann Daniells recounts her early years growing up in the village. Since then, Ann moved away but returned to live in the village in 1998.

A girl’s memories of the post-war years

Ann Daniells

In the forties, day-to-day life was totally within the village, and every side of life, school, church, shops, had its seasons. We lived in Grafton Terrace.

Games were played by season. We would have skipping with a thick

rope stretched across the street, with one child at each end twirling whilst everyone else skipped to the song, “All in together this fine weather”. The High Street was the main playground outside of school, and in those days there were no parked cars! There were some cars in the village, but you could count them on one hand. We played with whips and tops which were carefully coloured with chalk so they made a pretty pattern when they spun. Then we chalked out hopscotch on the pavement, and threw a piece of slate into each square, before hopping off and picking up the slate whilst balancing on one leg. During winter evenings we played 60-in: one of us counted up to 60 whilst everyone else went off to hide.

We played ‘two balls’ on Johnny Wise’s brick wall and of course people were not too happy with us if the ball ended up in their beautifully kept front gardens. Johnny Wise lived with his sister Florrie, and although they had a big house, they lived in the cellar. He had a terrible temper, and he used to shout at his sister. We used to peep into the cellar, which was lit with a paraffin lamp. Johnny would go to Stony Stratford and Wolverton on his bike, and sell rhubarb, apples and bluebells from his garden. People in the towns thought he was very poor. What they didn’t know was that once a year out would come his car, he would wear a

Entertainment with Henry Fermor (the clown).

[Source: Jack Clamp]

Performers in a Henry Fermor concert of the early 1950s. [Source: Jenny Walker]

bowler hat, gold watch and chain, and drive to London to his old school, the Blue Coat School, where (I think) he was a governor.

The weekly entertainment was Camera Jack who used to show Laurel and Hardy films in the village hall, then called ‘The Hut’. Only two or three people had televisions in those days. The Brownie pack used to meet in the Old Social Room. I remember having to draw a picture of something that we would like to give to the then Princess Elizabeth for her 21st birthday. When we got a bit older we went to Girl Guides, which met on a Thursday evening. Miss Faux was our

Guide Captain, and we played games, learnt our knots, and worked for our proficiency badges.

On Good Friday we would go to the woods to gather primroses and violets, and on Easter Saturday we’d take them to church to decorate the children’s corner where Miss Hilda Faux would supervise the Easter Garden. On May Day, we would collect wild and garden flowers, decorate our dolls’ prams and go around the houses singing, “Good morning, good ladies, good morning we say, for we’ve come to remind you all it’s the merry month of May”.

Most of our mothers were at home, as very few went out to work, but some took in washing or dress making. Washday took some organising. Mother was up very early to light the copper, which was in the wash house by the barn, quite a way from the house. There was a big mangle to squeeze out water from the washing before hanging it out to dry. Some people who took in washing or had large families were still busy washing away by candlelight to get finished.

On Sunday afternoon I would go to Sunday school, where we were awarded with a stamp each week for good attendance. After that we would go for a Sunday walk around Puxley or in summer we’d go further

afield to Bradlem Pond or the Queen’s Oak. We would have on our Sunday-best clothes and I remember I had a blue straw bonnet with pink rosebuds. Whit Sunday was something to look forward to as we always had a new dress and could wear ankle socks, which made a great change from lisle stockings or woollen knee socks.

Most people had large gardens and grew their own vegetables. We always had a pig, chickens, ferrets and pet rabbits. My father went rabbiting with the ferrets on Saturday afternoons and the rag and bone man would come into the village and collect the rabbit skins. We kept bees and Dad would extract the honey from the comb. During the war, sugar was in short supply, so we had to have a special permit signed by Mr Maxey, the headmaster, so we could feed the bees with the sugar during the winter.

We were kept busy running errands for our mothers and neighbours, to the baker’s, butcher’s, the dairy for milk or the general grocery shop. Sometimes on the way home the hot bread used to smell so delicious that I would pick the crust and very quickly a hole would appear in the loaf. On Sunday mornings, Mr Jefcoate, the baker, would heat up his big ovens and we would take our

Rook Pie

Robert and Rosemary Weston recall a lot of people keeping ferrets, and rabbits were a large part of the diet. Rook pie was also popular when the annual rook shoot took place in the middle of May. Only young rooks were shot, as many as 60 dozen, with a rifle not a shotgun, and the kids had the painful job of fetching the corpses out of waist-high stinging nettles. Rook pie was made with the breast and leg meat, mixed with hardboiled eggs, parsley and jelly.

Joan Goff singing ‘They try to tell us we’re too young’, with Peter Clark and Jenny Stewart (Walker). [Source: Joan Goff]

The young Ann Baseley (Daniells).

Johnny Wise

We have already heard tell of John Scrivenor (Johnny) Wise. He was the last of the old village family of Wise. He was educated at the Blue Coat School and later became a governor there. He worked in a London bank and travelled there in a pre-war Austin Seven. He had on some occasions been known to travel there by bicycle! After his retirement he dabbled at small repairs to the many properties he owned in the area and would be seen travelling on his pushbike (which he mounted using a back step) wearing a bowler hat and a frock coat green with age. People in Stony Stratford and Wolverton thought that he was a pauper as he went around selling wild flowers. After he died in 1956 his estate was valued at some £40,000, which was quite a fortune at that time. He was inordinately proud of his Austin Seven. In order to garage it he would park on the opposite side of the road to his house and get out to open the gate. Whilst he was doing this, it was not unknown for village children to hide behind the car and hang on to it whilst Johnny was revving the engine and wondering why it wouldn’t move. As soon as they let go he would shoot across into his drive like a rocket.

Sunday roast to be cooked and with it big Yorkshire puddings. They were collected at 12.30 and the charge was sixpence (two and a half pence today).

I used to belong to Merry Comrades. Each year we would have to save £1 in “ship” halfpennies or bun pennies (the ‘ship’ halfpenny was so called because it had a picture of a ship on the opposite side to the King’s head and the ‘bun’ penny was the Victorian penny on which the Queen’s hair was made up into a

bun). The reward would be a badge and a trip to the pantomime in Northampton, where the badges were presented. It was co-ordinated by someone called Auntie Dick from Northampton and the money went to the Northampton hospital.

We didn’t have WCs but had to go to the ‘barn’ where we had a bucket toilet with a wooden seat. The cart would come weekly to empty it.

I think I was about 10 years old when the High Street was dug up for the main sewer, and I remember Mr Ford, who was then the headmaster, writing a song for the school concert. It went something like this, “They have dug up Potterspury to build a sewer, they have dug it up regardless of the cost, they have dug in sun and rain just to lay a blinking drain, I wonder what the rates are going to be.” This didn’t meet with everyone’s approval because the sewer was beneficial from a health point of view.

Electricity came quite late in our house. We had a paraffin lamp on the kitchen table and a brass paraffin lamp hanging in the sitting room. When we had been out and got home in the dark, I remember jumping up and down, saying, “Be quick and trim the lamp”. The drinking water came from an outside

tap shared by seven other families (from Grafton Terrace). In winter it would freeze up, and someone would boil the kettle to unfreeze it. Then this water would freeze, making wonderful icicles. Yes, from a child’s perspective the winters did seem colder, as we had only one fire which was in the kitchen and heated the oven, which had to be black leaded each day. At weekends and high days we had a fire in the sitting room which was a real treat (there was no central heating then).

The snow of 1947 was exciting for us children. The buses couldn’t run to Wolverton works and the men dug a way through to the school. This was a disadvantage of living so close as I could get to the school and so could Miss Cozens who lived by the school gates, but the class was very small that day. The snow lasted in places until almost the end of March. We built snow houses on the ‘old houses site’, next to Pretoria Cottages. At this time there were no houses built on Mays Way or Meadow View and there were open fields on both sides of the High Street.

I remember two major events, the first when we were all taken from school to see the pottery kilns which had been excavated in Mrs Jos

Leaving church in Sunday-best.

[Milton Keynes Museum]

Hobson’s garden (the thatched cottage next to The Old Social). The other was seeing the old church bells being removed from the tower and later being rehung. All fund-raising in the village then was for the church bell fund.

One major summer event was the church fete which was held in the

vicarage grounds. The gardens were much larger then, as this was before the chalet-style houses in Church Lane had been built. There was great excitement amongst the children as there was often a fancy dress competition with much work going into the costumes. In late summer there was the annual fruit, vegetable

and flower show which was held in ‘The Hut’. We children were not left out, we entered for the best wild flower collection and, with all the open fields and little use of chemicals, wild flowers grew in great abundance.

During the long summer days of the school holidays, when it seemed the sun always shone, we would go paddling in the brook by the big plank. The bigger children would swim by the little plank along the bottom of Duffers Hill, where the water was deeper. In winter snow we would sledge down Duffers Hill, careful to stop before the brook. In the big school playground the boys and some of the bigger girls would make a long slide on the ice. They used to take us down doing ‘little man’. The winters seemed colder then and the summers sunnier.

When autumn came we would go along the hedgerows picking blackberries and hips, which we took to school, and these were sold to

Anchor corner and Watling Street in the late 1950s. [Source: John Giddings]

The May Queen of 1953 and her attendants. Back row: Jean Osborne, Shirley Atkins, Angela Coppin, Vera Howard, Rose Meakins, Jennifer Stewart, Maureen Spencer, Margaret Bushell, Sheila Atkins, Doreen Lake, Ann Goodridge, Linda Holloway, Angela Giddings, Iris Tapp. Front row: Olwyn Richards, Dennis Roberts, Eleanor Wootton, Jean Barby, Sheila Oakenson (May Queen), Jean Young, Trevor Roberts, Kathleen Evans. [Hilda Faux’s “Memories”]

make rose hip syrup – that’s if they hadn’t been split open and put down your back as itching powder! We also went mushrooming. The old football field and the field towards Brownswood were very good, but you had to be up early or someone would beat you to it. In early October we would go to the woods to get nuts, which, if they weren’t all eaten, we would have at Christmas. Autumn also saw the annual visit of Strudwick’s Fair which took place in Charlie Foster’s field. Swing boats and the horse roundabouts were the most daring rides, but we enjoyed it.

When I now read The Old Mail, having returned recently to the village after an absence of almost 40 years, I read of vandalism, which didn’t happen then, probably for two reasons. Firstly, everyone in the village knew you and would know what you were doing. Secondly there were two policemen living in the village, and they were always about on their bikes or walking, which was a real deterrent against crime. Probably one of the most serious acts of crime would be children going into Bill Druce’s field (across the Watling Street from Holly House) to collect walnuts, but if they were not quite ripe they would have a green outer coat and, if it was removed, your hands got covered in walnut stain. At this time of the year, the policeman would visit the school for

an inspection of everyone’s hands and we had a good ticking off if they were stained brown!

Although in monetary terms and material possessions we were poor, we were rich in childhood security and in people caring and sharing with us. Looking back I feel privileged that I grew up in Potterspury during the 1940s.

This was the perspective of a young girl growing up after the war. What was it like for a boy growing up in the same period? Here we have Mick Wootton’s account of his childhood. Mick has always lived in the village, been an active member of many local organisations, and has

been a parish councillor for over 20 years.

A boy’s memories of the post-war years

Mick Wootton

I was born in Pretoria Cottages in 1942, the youngest of five, with three brothers and one sister. The village and its people were obviously a different mixture then and I have seen many changes, mostly for the better.

In June 1947 we moved to the newly built council houses in Church End, our removal van being Mr Pattimore’s horse and cart. What a struggle it was lifting the piano up onto the high-wheeled cart (I just stood and watched!).

The new estate of Poundfield Road, Furtho Lane and Grafton Close was quite an adventure playground while it was being built (around 1950) for the many kids who had recently moved into the 12 new homes in Church End. One great game to play here was 60-in.

I started school in January 1948, being the first term after my fifth birthday, with my teacher for the first two years being the legendary Miss Carrie Cozens. All five of us were at Pury school at the same time, as it then educated children up to the age of fifteen. The school was not only

Mr and Mrs Ford with a group of school children.

[Source: Mrs Gladys Barby]

Collection of Sunday roast from Jefcoate’s bakery.

[Milton Keynes Museum]

for children from Potterspury but also took in all 11 to 15 year-olds from Yardley Gobion and Cosgrove. The eleven-plus exam was taken at all three schools. Those who passed went to Towcester Grammar School and those who didn’t continued their education at Potterspury County Primary School. Mr Maxey was the headmaster when I first attended. When he retired he was followed by Graham “Beppo” Ford. He was here for many years with the school in good hands. He left to be the first headmaster of the new Secondary Modern School at Roade.

I well remember a prediction that Beppo made during one of his lessons to a class of 10 to 12 yearolds, bearing in mind that black and white television had only recently arrived in the homes of the fairly well-off, “During your lifetime you will see not only colour TV but also a man landing on the Moon,” he said. We all thought the old boy had lost his marbles, and even now I’m astounded that his forecast was achieved in such a short time. He had fairly comprehensive background knowledge of the electronics available even at that time as he was a bomber pilot in the RAF during the war, so would have known of the latest developments in radar and military communications.

There were five classrooms with five teachers, so the classes were large and covered two to three-year age

groups. Sport was encouraged with the boys competing against other schools at football and the girls at netball. For several years a pantomime was put on with each class performing. The partition wall between the two large classrooms was removed to give enough space for the stage and audience. (The present school hall had not been built.) Each child was asked to bring to school one or two chairs to be used to seat the audience.

The senior boys attended woodwork classes in the Wood Memorial Hall at the chapel for one whole day a week, with the senior girls going to Deanshanger School (not Kingsbrook) for domestic science lessons. My sister’s efforts were eagerly awaited on a Thursday afternoon as she usually cooked up something different. The senior boys from Deanshanger made the trip to Pury for their day of woodwork lessons.

When the new Secondary Modern School at Deanshanger (Kingsbrook) opened in 1958, all over-elevens from the three villages attended. Those passing the eleven-plus exam still went to Towcester. When comprehensive education was introduced in 1965, everyone from this age group attended Deanshanger as they do now.

Our mother was actively involved with the Chapel, the WI and the Merry Comrades. The Merry Comrades was a charity run by the Mercury and Herald weekly newspaper from Northampton, to raise funds for the benefit of hospital patients in its circulation area. Pury branch for several years ran a May Day fete with a May Queen and her attendants touring the village on a wagon drawn by two shire horses loaned by farmer Richards of Beech House Farm. The procession was led by Pury Band under the leadership of Reg Atkins.

Father was keenly involved in village sport, being active with both the football and cricket clubs. When competitive sport resumed in 1946 the two sports were once again played in one of Mr Soper’s fields at Puxley (the field alongside the driveway to Brownswood farmhouse). The teams changed in the clubroom at the

the ‘cost’ of Recreation

Ken Barby recalls the time when: I went across to the recreation area behind the village hall one night when they were playing cricket and I said ‘Come on lads, in you come now,’ and Rodney Duckmanton said, ‘Let’s have one more, you have a bat Mr Barby.’ So he bowls the ball and I hit it and it went bang, bang, bang, bounced on Tom Smith’s car and straight through his greenhouse. There was me left there holding the cricket bat while all the kids disappeared into the hedge. It cost me six shillings (30p, but worth a lot more in those days) for a new pane of glass.

Anchor and walked round to the field or cadged a lift on the opponents’ bus. The cricket pavilion was a wooden shed with the teas being provided and served by Glad Barby and Aggie Bason. Ken Barby was recognised as one of the best fast bowlers in the area and the Bason lads were pretty useful as well.

The football team was well supported and ran one of Ted Smith’s buses to all away games, and if there was a good cup run going it was not unheard of to fill two buses. Ted’s early Bedford bus had wooden seats and in order to cram on more passengers for these occasions, wooden planks were placed between

First Aid

Robert Weston tells of woodwork classes that took place in the Wood Memorial Hall with teacher Jack ‘Fidgy’ Phillips, who liked to gather all the childrenround to make a point. Once, a lad pushed a chisel through his hand. ‘Fidgy’ gathered everyone around and pointed out that this was something to be avoided. He then tended the wound!

Mick Wootton in 1948, aged 5.

Little Wally and the Rabbits

Keith Solesbury recalls that during the war, little Wally Johnson, one of the evacuees, had been across the fields to Charlie Weston’s and seen lots of rabbits. So he said to me and Bill Church who’d got a dog “Let’s go over the fields after dinner and get some rabbits”. It sounded like a good idea so we got some sticks and went over to Charlie Weston’s farm at Moor End. There wasn’t a cat-inhell’s chance of catching those rabbits, but the dog ran in after them. Charlie came out. He got the dog and when Billy went to get it, he grabbed him as well. He took them over to the farm and threatened to shoot the dog. He really terrorised Billy. Wally and I ran home. Eventually Charlie let Billy go. Tom Church, he was a big bloke, he went and squared up to Charlie Weston. There must have been hundreds of rabbits: one or two less wouldn’t have made any difference.

the seats across the gangway for two kids to sit on (how about that for safety?).

My recollections of life started after the war. For several years we continued to play the games of our parents until these games became outdated: whip-and-top, marbles, skipping and hop-scotch. May singing was a bit like carol singing, only you knocked on people’s doors with a posy on a stick and sang the May ditty, and of course carol singing was still a popular way of cadging a few pence

pocket money. November the fifth was a very popular festivity when penny-for-the-guy was another way of making an odd penny or two. We either made a stuffed guy as nowadays or ‘obtained’ a mangle (manglewurzle), gouged out the core, cut holes for eyes, nose and mouth and lit a candle inside to go “Guy Fawkesing”, most effective after dark.

During the school holidays the lads from Lower End played in any field they could get away with, and the lads from Blackwell End were the pain for Dick Bailey whose fields they used. Once each football season we obtained special permission to use the village football pitch to play the deadly serious game ‘Brackle End against Lower End’. These games took a lot of organising because each team had to make sure they could field their strongest eleven. I’m pretty sure Lower End won these battles on most occasions but I suppose John and Tubby Trew would argue the other way. We also competed as fervently at cricket during the summer.

Most village lads were keen on sports, once again possibly because TV had not yet taken control of our leisure time. There was always a problem though, because until Meadow View playing field was provided there was no field where we

School football team of 1959. Back row: Philip Drinkwater, John Russell, Peter Harris, David Tomkins, Peter Osborne, Kenneth Mason, Alan Fox, Lynn Stewart. Front row: Ian Pittam, Kevin Barby, James Pittam, Stephen Dring, Derek Ray.

[Source: Jenny Walker]

A men’s outing of the 1950s.Back row: Mr Lawson?, Will Wootton, Walter Green, Mr Emsworth, Tom Pratt, Snobby Holloway, Syd Holloway, Mr Twisleton, ? , Harry Tapp, Alf Wooton, Mr Odell, Mr Tarry, ? . Middle row: Jess Bradbury, Walt Bradbury, Charlie Foster, Jesse Packer?, Freddie Dunkley, ? ,Wallace Lambert. Front row: Joe Meakins, Harry Toombes, Mr Barby, Bill Druce, Steve Meakins, R. Wise, Jim Henson.

[Source: Jenny Walker]

The Cock Inn

The youngest of the village pubs, dating from 1842, the Cock is perhaps the last remaining pub which could be described as a true village ‘local’: a meeting place for villagers. It was formerly a Phipps and Co. pub, sold to Watney Mann when they took over the Northampton Brewery complex (now Carlsberg Tetley). The landlords have often been characters and have always supported village organisations.

Frank Novak was landlord during the 1970s and well known for keeping late hours. A favourite game was played in the rear bar late at night along the spirits shelf. One to choose the bottle, the next one to pay and the next one to drink it!

This went on till the early hours of the morning! Frank, who was of German origin, would always talk about a neighbouring pub as ‘der Vite Line at Vicken’.

There used to be a wooden screen between parts of the front bar, but one night two brothers argued over

a game of cards and proceeded to take it apart to hit each other with. When the police arrived they passed the pair walking home with their arms around each other’s shoulders.

For many years there were ladies’ and men’s skittles teams, as well as darts. At one time the men’s Skittle Club outing was the highlight of the year, but most of those stories are not for printing! Dominoes was another serious pastime played in the bar. The room to the rear, now a restaurant, was for many years used by the village band for practice. It was here that rehearsals for youth club pantomimes used to take place. For many years, one evening a month was devoted to live acoustic music when anyone with a musical turn of mind could join in with a varied assortment of guitars, mandolins, fiddles, banjos, etc.

The Cock Inn at the time of the Queen’s coronation. [Doug Holloway]

1847Mrs Martha Newman. The licence contained the clause that she should not “knowingly introduce, permit, or suffer any bull, bear, or badger baiting, cock fighting, or other such amusements in any part of the premises.”

1874George Ismay, who supplemented his income as a butcher

1890Edwin Rice, who was also a butcher

1898Walter Jones

1910Albert Tapp, who continued the butcher’s business

were allowed to play and this led to us being frequently turned out of fields by irate farmers. Many were the times when we had to scarper because Ostle was coming. The local bobby, PC (later Sgt) Gordon Ostle, had been sent by the farmer to remove us and give us a ticking off for trespass. We were terrified of him. How things have changed. Apparently, if you got to know him socially he was quite a

The Cock is the only pub for which a full list of landlords is available. This compilation is based largely on the list that hangs on the pub wall.

1920Mrs Hannah Henson

1937John Luck

1950William Young 1956George Wilson 1966Frank Novak

1977William Reynolds 1981Patrick Mulhall

1985Brian Hartwell

1999(May to November) Joan and Ian Hartwell 1999Lesley Mansfield and David Wintle

nice bloke, but we kids didn’t see that side of him.

Dolly Russell’s father used to come to the village in the summer and give or barter rides in his pony and traps. For a bundle of rags or a few jam jars he would take us on a trip round the village in our choice of carriage, either the smaller, quicker buggy, or a larger more sedate wagon. For the same offering he would

provide a goldfish instead of the ride.

The Holloway brothers Syd, Ken and Dick kept a few milking cattle: first of all in the field at the vicarage and then a bit later at the mill which they bought when Mr Peron died. This in itself does not seem very remarkable but then haymaking time surely was. They mowed and made hay from the grass verges along the Yardley road and to transport this

back to make a hayrick in the vicarage field they used a large wagon pulled by a ‘hand-tractor’. This was a tractor with a fairly powerful engine between two wheels and coupled to the wagon with a towbar. It didn’t have a steering wheel but was steered by the driver who either walked immediately behind or sat on the front of the cart, and to turn a corner he would heave on the handlebars to turn the axle. Haymaking was quite an event because many children of all ages and sizes helped to load the wagon, with the small ones on top of the hay treading it down while the men and bigger lads tossed the hay up to them. I said ‘helped’ but I don’t know how the men had so much patience to put up with so many children, in an operation which was actually quite dangerous and would certainly not be allowed today. Anyway, the ride back down the road with a wagon full of hay and topped off with any number of children was great fun.

The mill was still grinding corn into flour until 1951. The millstones

were latterly driven by belts from a petrol driven tractor, but previously were driven by a waterwheel using water from the mill pool, a large pond formed behind a dam across Pury brook, and since filled in. Another country custom which we greatly enjoyed in late summer was corn harvest time when we went ‘cutting’. During the summer school holidays we would spend many afternoons playing cricket, rounders, 60-in or tracking, when the call would come that it was time to go and stalk the rabbits in the cornfield. The tractor and binder had for several hours been working their way towards the middle of the field and the poor scared rabbits would be forced to retreat away from the blades of the binder and there would come a time when the area of corn still standing was quite small. This was the time when it was worth putting in an appearance because sooner or later these poor creatures would have to make a run for the hedge pursued by bloodthirsty kids with sticks: most made it, but some

did not.

Ronald Henson drove the tractor with Frank Baseley operating the binder, which cut the corn, bound it up into sheaves and dropped them out onto the ground as it went along. Frank had a great technique of jumping off the binder to catch any unsuspecting rabbits which had just come into stick reach by the last swathe of corn to be cut. We also used to follow the binder in the hope that

The Holloways’ ‘hand-tractor’. [Doug Holloway]

Cricket team of around 1936 outside Greystone Lodge. Behind: Mr Evans. Back row: Eric Dunkley, Harold Dunkley, Alf Wootton, Will Toombs, Albert Ratcliffe, Aubrey Stewart. Front row: George Toombs, Arthur Wootton, Donald Bason, Will Ratcliffe, R. Tapp. [Alex Wootton]

Frank would not spot one and then we would clout it with a stick. This seems barbaric to me now, but such were the ways of country life.

John Soper’s grandfather was the farmer and he would have an area of the field where we were forbidden to chase the rabbits because he wanted his bit of sport with his shotgun, and that was an area where it was not at all healthy for the rabbits, as not many made it to the hedge. As the last swathe of corn was cut, rabbits would

be running in alldirections. The best place to catch one was near the hedge, then you could hide it in the ditch until later. Why do that? Well,Mr Soper would collect up all of the dead rabbits, those which had been shot, those run down, and those clubbed to death. He would then hand out one to each person present, but it was a good idea to keep well apart from your brother because hewould say, “Your lot have one already”. Added to those we had hidden, we sometimes had three

or four to take home for tomorrow’s dinner.

Just before the developments of the Limes Estate and Meadow View with the near doubling of the village population, and when TV dominated people’s spare time, there was apathy to anything that went on in the village. The village hall became quite run down, it was difficult to drag folk from their chairs to fund-raising events or to social occasions which became rare anyway, and the hall was seldom used. For a short time the youths of the village used it to play five-a-side football which certainly did not help the internal fittings.

The miracle which saved the building from destruction was an Act of Parliament which altered the country’s gambling laws. Bingo came to Pury with a bang. Once a week the old place was packed out with the new craze, which continued for several years. The considerable sums of money raised by this were put to good use to fit a new floor, buy new furniture and generally renovate the building. Of course we well know the effect of the arrival of the newcomers, and in no place can it be better witnessed than the fine facility of today.

Now let us turn the clock

Mrs Smith Motorcyclist Extraordinary

Mrs Smith lived at Cherry Tree Lodge on the Whittlebury Road and was the proud owner of a big Ariel Square Four motor bike. (The Ariel was a very large, heavy, 1000cc machine normally used for sidecar work.) She bought it from Ron Fleming’s shop in Stony Stratford and was for many years in the 1940s and 50s a familiar sight in the area, thundering up and down the Watling Street. So large and heavy was the bike that she had a block of wood attached to a length of string which she would place under the footrest to prevent the bike leaning at too great an angle (from which she was unable to lift it!).

Her husband was something of a recluse (some people believed him to be a poet although he was actually an author). She invariably obtained her meals from the Nelson Cafe (now the Super Sausage Cafeteria) collecting them in a large flask – eggs,

bacon, the lot – all together! Occasionally the bike would fall over in the car park and the lorry drivers would help her to lift it back up. It developed a strange habit of seizing up and throwing her off, a problem which even the manufacturers were unable to solve. Finally it threw her into the ditch near the dip in the A5 near the fish farm, where she lay for some time undiscovered. She never fully recovered from this accident and apparently never drove again. She was an educated woman and came from a quite wealthy family. She was generous to the staff at the Nelson, leaving them a £10 tip each Christmas. Although the house appeared deserted for many years, surrounded as it was by corrugated iron, Mrs Smith remained there until the late 1960s. It is thought that she eventually went to live in a home.

View of the mill showing the mill pool as it was.

[Source: Roger Welling]

forward another 20 years or so and see the changes revealed in Kelly Holman’s recollections of the 1970s. Although Kelly didn’t live in the village until the mid-70s she came on numerous visits in previous years and her parents are from families who have lived in the village for many years.

Memories of the village in the 1970s

Kelly Holman

In the middle of a picnic one summer’s day in 1972 my Dad announced that we were sitting in the living room of our new home. My sister and I, at five and seven respectively, were bemused. All we could see was a field clothed in golden buttercups and two enormous horses with big-looking teeth bearing down upon us. We fled while our parents rescued the sandwiches; then my Dad explained. We were building a house in Beech House Drive and moving to Potterspury.

Potterspury was a funny place. In Potterspury, men dressed up as women, complete with large wobbling ‘bosoms’ that made us giggle, and raced up and down the High Street pushing prams and drinking lots of beer. We were not sure what they were doing exactly but it was fun to watch perched up high on a wall for a better view.

In Potterspury a man called ‘Cocky Moore’ had a brook which zigzagged like a drunken snake through the countryside. We did not know who he was but most days when we failed to get the parting in our hair straight Mum would exclaim “you’ve got a Cocky Moore’s brook.” He felt like an old friend. [Cocky Moore’s brook runs from Moor End to the playing field.] In Potterspury the children danced around a Maypole and wove magical patterns with brightly coloured ribbons. In Potterspury people called you ‘my duck’, and if you were scared, they said you were ‘frit’. My teacher told

me ‘frit’ was not a word I should use in my stories.

Best of all, in Potterspury lived our grandparents, Dick and Mabel Holloway, and our five aunts, my Mum’s sisters, Eileen, Margaret, Mavis, Sheila and Linda. Together with uncles and cousins they made an impressive clan. It was like a homecoming!

Over the next four years as the house took shape we spent every weekend and holiday roving the Potterspury countryside with our friends and future neighbours, Graham and Adrian Henson, in search of adventure. Like generations before us we made our own entertainment. We hiked off across the fields to far-flung places like Yardley Gobion and Furtho. Like most children, I suppose, we were drawn to the brook. Particularly engrossing was a scheme we hatched to divert the course of the brook on its route to Furtho by means of a dam. We did not understand why, when we returned each weekend the farmer had destroyed last week’s feat of engineering. We even harvested and ate watercress from the brook.

Our favourite place was without a shadow of a doubt the place we called ‘Pap’s Mill’. Our grandfather, Dick Holloway, kept a smallholding at the mill until, at about the age of eighty, his heart was willing but his legs had become reluctant. We had it on good

authority (his!) that he raised the best pigs in Northamptonshire. He took them to market in Northampton in his little grey pick-up van or in a trailer which he pulled all the way on the back of his old red Massey Ferguson tractor. He collected all of the leftovers from dinners at the local schools in big churns and fed them to the pigs. When he collected from our school, St Mary’s and St Giles in Stony Stratford, our Nan came with him and brought us a chocolate biscuit each. We were very proud.

We were scared of the pigs. They

The famous Potterspury pram race in full swing in 1970.

[Source: Jack Clamp]

Doris Clamp, Grace Griffiths and Maureen Hill attired in exotic costumes for the Potterspury pram race event of the early 1970s.

[Source: Joseph Alp]

were housed in a large pigsty (which has now been converted into garages for the Mill Cottages) and various outbuildings. They made one almighty racket at feeding time, it could be heard through most of the village and the sows looked enormous. We loved to see the little piglets when they were born. Whenever the air was a bit ‘whiffy’ in Potterspury, people would curl up their noses and say “that’s Dick’s pigs”. My sister and I took this as a personal slight. Now that only the ghosts of pigs remain at the mill, if ever that certain ‘rural smell’ lies thick over the village I stick my nose in the air and think, “Dick’s pigs” with a wry smile.

The mill building itself was strictly off bounds to us as children unless we were accompanied. It was full only of the echoes of the past but those echoes excited us as they reverberated around the vast empty house. We always wanted to clamber to the very top as quickly as possible as though we were trying to catch the ghost of a bygone era that had fled up before us. The flights of wooden steps were very steep and as we got higher and higher so there was less and less floor to stand on. At the very top was a large open doorway through which sacks of grain had been winched ready for milling many years before. Once my Pap had fallen through it accidentally. We stayed back from the edge, anxious not

to make the same mistake. Lonely on one of the stone walls hung a sepia photograph of one of my Pap’s brothers, Charlie. My Mum said he had died of diphtheria when he was just a boy. We had no idea what diphtheria was but it made us sad to look at him.

In the winter of 1973/1974 there was a world oil crisis and as a precaution the school conserved its heating fuel supplies by closing its doors for several weeks to the younger years. We greeted this crisis with delight and willed it to continue for as long as possible. It was only marred by the unwelcome but unsubstantiated rumour that we might have to forfeit some of our scheduled holiday as a result. Once back at school we kept quiet and the idea seemed to be forgotten.

By 1976 my parents’ dream had become a reality. The house was ready. The move took place with the aid of my Pap’s grey pickup van (carefully cleaned of any hint of pigs). At last we lived in Potterspury. Those days were accompanied by the sounds of Abba and Showaddywaddy. I started school at Kingsbrook in my new brown school uniform. Winters were colder then or perhaps it had something to do with not being allowed to wear trousers for school. Unthinkable now I imagine. By the time the school bus arrived we had knees the colour of

tomatoes. At 11 years old we sat near the front of the bus faintly terrified of the ‘big’ girls who sat at the back wearing platform shoes. Sometimes they even dared to light up a ‘fag’ on the way home! But Ivan Smith had a keen nose. The merest hint of smoke and he would stop the bus and seek out the culprit. On several occasions in the late seventies the snow was so heavy that our little Ford Anglia car could not make the hill of Beech House Drive. Teenage angst was beckoning by then and we suffered the indignity of having to get behind it and push. On one occasion the snow fall overnight was so heavy that we awoke to find ourselves literally snowed in. Further indignity as we had to dig ourselves out.

Soon entertainment in the village was no longer to be found in the great outdoors but instead sought eagerly at the Youth Club and particularly at Youth Club discos. For a few years Girl Guides fitted the bill admirably. There was however one thing missing at Girl Guides – boys! This species was to be found at the discos which were held in the village hall. At 14 we all thought ourselves sophisticated beyond belief and waited breathless with anticipation to be asked to dance. The pinnacle of the evening was being walked home by a boy you liked. Our current obsession with automatically activated outside lights was still some years away and so you could linger in the shadows and sneak a kiss or two safely out of view of parents waiting inside.

By around 1980 there was a new and even more exotic pastime to be had beyond the village: roller skating at the Agora in Wolverton. Potterspury dads rallied around to provide taxi services to this pleasure dome. (Initially we still had the Ford Anglia. My Dad had strict instructions to drop us off and collect us around the corner to spare us the humiliation of being seen getting in or out of it!) At the Agora there were boys from as far afield as Northampton! We became very accomplished roller skaters indeed.

By 1983 the charms of Potterspury had worn thin for me,

The mill pool and the rear of Potterspury mill in the 1950s. [Doug Holloway]

now eighteen. I went in search of bright lights elsewhere, first to Germany (then West Germany) on a year out from studying, and then to university in London. Ten years later in 1993 a little stone cottage near the cemetery came onto the property market. It had that indefinable feeling about it, the one which makes a place feel it is a home waiting for you to fill it. And so it was back to Potterspury. Dating back to the late l7th century the cottage could conceivably have been built by Holmans, ancestors of mine who made their living as stone masons in this area. I like to think this is so. It is also intriguing to think about the children who grew up here and wonder what their childhood was like. Without a doubt it was much, much tougher for them but it is nice to imagine that some of our childhood preoccupations were not so very different. Roller skating? I think probably not. Stolen kisses? I think definitely yes!

Our final accounts of childhood in the are of the modern era at the close of the 20th century, written by two sisters, Louise and Rebecca Houseago, aged 10 and 8 respectively.

Louise writes, ‘I have lived in Potterspury all of my life. I went to Playgroup in the village hall, starting at the age of two. In 1994, I started at John Hellins Primary School at the age of four. On my first day my teacher was Mrs Thompson. I had mixed feelings as I was scared because I was completely unaware of what was going to happen, while at the same time I was excited for exactly the same reason. I was glad to be with all my friends from Playgroup and I went home for lunch. I spent most of the day playing in the sand, water or with other toys, although I had a couple of stories read to me. The day gradually got better but, despite this, I still had to have my tea quickly and go to bed early when I got home as I was so exhausted.

I have just finished my sixth year (out of seven) at school. I have trained with the school football team ever

since it started. I got picked for the school football squad for the first time when I was in year 4, and have continued to be a fairly regular member of the squad. I started off as the only girl to go to football training and although a couple of other girls also came along, I am still the only girl in the squad.

I started Brownies just over a year ago and thoroughly enjoyed it. As I am now 10, I have just started Guides. Although I haven’t been going long I have really enjoyed what I have done there and am hoping to go camping at Cosgrove Quarries at the beginning of September.’

Rebecca writes, ‘On Thursday evenings, from 6.15 to 7.45 p.m., Brownies from this area gather together for meetings at the Wood Memorial Hall. At the beginning we sing the ‘Brownie Guide song’. Every week we play games and make things. We have a main activity and lots of little activities every week. I like it because I meet friends who don’t live in the village.

Once every week, on Fridays, I used to go to the Good News Club. We played games and sang songs and we had a tuck shop. When Richard Davies (the URC minister) left, it became T.G.I.F. (Thank God It’s Friday). Unfortunately, after a while, it closed down.

I like to live in Potterspury because we are close to Milton Keynes for lots of shops, cinemas, parks, and so on, and yet we still live in the countryside.’

This brings us up-to-date with

our accounts of life in the village through the eyes of local residents over a 100-year period. Inevitably it is incomplete, as it has depended on the information available, the goodwill of contributors coming forward to offer their accounts, and on their particular experiences. We have seen something of the changing living conditions and the involvement of villagers in a variety of activities – but what about life in the home?

The daily lives of young families

Certainly we know that at the beginning of the century, life in the home was not easy. The man of the house would probably work long hours at frequently tiring work. By the time he came home in the evening and enjoyed his evening meal there would be little time for anything but resting and sleeping ready for the following day’s work. Much leisure time would probably be devoted to gardening to ensure that the family had at least a good supply of vegetables.

But what of the housewife? In those days very few women went out to work. Nevertheless, it was often necessary to augment the family income in some way. This was often accomplished by taking in washing for those who were better off. Yet even apart from this the average housewife faced a formidable task. There were no vacuum cleaners, washing machines, electric irons or dishwashers. No hot water on tap (often not even cold). There was no gas and no electricity, every job around the house had to be done by hand. There was no Playgroup, Under Fives or Minnows so those below school age (which was then 5 years of age) had to be looked after all day and every day in addition to the household chores. Much of this hardship was not confined to the early years of the century. For those in rural areas, many of these essential chores were still a part of life into the 1960s.

Louise and Rebecca Houseago

Much about daily life in the village has changed over the past 70 years, but some things have stayed pretty well the same, as revealed here by the recollections of some young mothers bringing up their children through different decades of the 20th century.

In the 1930s Gladys Barby lived in a council house in Blackwell End. “The children went to school on their own, there were a lot of children who all went together. There was nothing to be afraid of then.” By the early 1950s Margaret Barby “made porridge for breakfast and the children had a cup of milk and maybe bread and jam. The children went on their own to the village school, the oldest looked after the youngest. I still had the baby at home with me,” and for Joan Goff inthe 1960s things hadn’t really changed: “they all walked to school on their own because there was no one to hurt them then.”

In the 1970s the village playgroup had started so Jenny Walker “walked Tina to school in the mornings, then took Lee to the village hall and came back home with the twins. Later I brought them all back home again for lunch.” It was similar in the 1980s for Janet Goff, “I always walked my daughter to school and took my son in the pram. He’d have half his bottle

on the way and half when he got back,” and the pattern continued in the 1990s for Wendy Todd who “always took Shaan to school to have a walk out and Zoe was in the pushchair.”

Housework was done once the children had gone to school, but for some mums this had to be fitted around paid work. For Gladys, “When they’d gone to school I had to do my housework and the washing. I had to take in washing because I couldn’t go out to work and anyway there wasn’t the work for women then. I took in the laundry from Lady Hillingdon’s grooms and their housemen up at Wakefield. They brought the washing to me about once a week. I fitted it in when I could and then I also did the washing for the Talbot when Mr and Mrs Leadenhall were there. It kept me in the house so I was there when the children came home from school. I did the washing in a copper in the wash-house; I did it all by hand but I had a mangle. I had to iron all the washing I took in; I had irons that I had to heat in front of the fire on an iron rack. It was hard work I can tell you.” When Margaret’s children had gone to school she would “do the washing by hand with soap and a washboard, but if I wanted to boil anything, like the nappies, I used a zinc bath over a primus stove in the barn. I’d got a second-hand mangle which was a luxury, especially for the sheets. It was alright in the summer drying everything outside, but in the winter we dried it all in front of the fire after the kids went to bed.” Joan would “have a day for washing; the council provided us with a portable copper. The water was heated by the fire; we’d have the fire built so high that sometimes the water boiled in the tank and came out brown. I had to dry the washing round the fire or out on the line and with the children there was always something drying. I did eventually get a second-hand spin dryer.” Jenny, however, owned a twin tub washing machine which, with four children she used frequently and “always got my washing and ironing

The Clanger Recipe

Potterspury bacon and onion clanger (to serve four): 10 oz self raising flour; 5 oz suet; 1 onion chopped; 8 oz bacon chopped; salt and pepper; water. Chopped mushrooms, peas, diced potato, parsley or mixed herbs can be added to the filling.

Sieve the flour into a mixing bowl and add the suet. Mix with water to form a dough. Roll out the dough on a floured board to form an oblong. Spread the filling ingredients over the dough making sure they are spread right up to the edges. Roll it all up like a Swiss roll and wrap it in a piece of foil with a pleat to allow for expansion. Wrap the clanger in a cloth, tie with string at both ends and in the middle and boil for two hours. Any leftovers can be sliced and fried for breakfast.

Gladys Barby with daughter Rose in 1935

Margaret Barby on the right and friend

done in the same day, if the weather was bad I dried it on the radiators around the house.” For Janet and Wendy the days of automatic washing machines and tumble dryers had arrived, so washing was not the chore it had once been.

Gladys’s children “came home to a cooked dinner. I made bacon and onion clanger, stew with dumplings, rabbit stew, anything I could get really. We had a good butcher then, nobody’s faggots were like Mr Button’s.” Margaret’s children also came home at midday. “We’d have beef or rabbit stew because it was a good meal, you could get a rabbit for sixpence from Mr Button, or we’d have sausage, and Yorkshire pudding or beans.” Lunch for Jenny’s family was “always sandwiches and then I’d give them a milky pudding, they didn’t really like cake. We’ve always had our cooked meal in the evening, all sitting at the table together.” School lunches had become popular both with the kids and their mums by the time Janet and Wendy’s daughters were at school.

The cooked meal whether it was eaten at midday or in the evening was very important. Gladys had “an oven fixed over a primus stove and I made cakes in the side oven in the grate. My husband always grew vegetables and we kept chickens in the garden so we

always had fresh eggs.” One day Joan would “make a suet pudding with bacon and onion with potatoes as well to make it moist. I made a huge one which I boiled for hours and then the next day we’d have it sliced and fried; I don’t know why it always tasted much nicer fried. We always had a joint of beef or lamb on Sunday and for Monday and Tuesday I’d put what was left through the mincer and make meat balls which we had with vegetables that we grew in the garden.” Jenny’s favourites were “cheese and onion tart, stew with dumplings and bacon and onion clanger. I always had a good supply of fresh vegetables and fruit from my grandma’s and Mum’s gardens. In July we had so many strawberries we were sick of them, but we always had fruit and custard for pudding.” Janet used “to cook almost everything myself; we usually had meat, beef or pork slices and sometimes we had a casserole. We also had bacon and onion clanger and the children liked sausages and baked beans, fish fingers and chips. We very rarely had a pudding, usually we had fruit. We grew a lot of vegetables and strawberries, I didn’t make cakes, I left that to my husband because he’s a better cook than me but I did make a lot of pastry.” For their dinner Wendy’s family would “maybe have

minced beef and onion pie, stew, bacon and onion clanger, bangers and mash, or pizzas which the kids loved. Most of my food was home made, although I had to be in the mood to bake cakes and then I’d bake all day.”

Joan also had “a day for doing cakes and I made enough for the week. We didn’t have a freezer but things didn’t seem to go mouldy as they do today; they kept fresh in the tin, I think flour was different then. I used to make sandwich cakes with lots of butter icing, fruit cake, apple pie and jam tarts. I’ve always been a good cook though. I suppose I learnt it from my Mum who had to feed my brothers.” Margaret occasionally “made a fruit cake but we didn’t really have cake, we couldn’t afford it.”

In the thirties Gladys did most of her shopping in the village: “Mrs Tapp kept a grocery shop next to the Cock, you could buy anything there. I got my meat from Mr Button and my bread from the bakehouse.” For Margaret “the International Stores would call once a week with the groceries, you’d order one Friday and they’d deliver the next. The milk was delivered to the door by Mr Ashford who had the dairy in Furtho Lane, he’d put it in a jug and come on Saturday to collect the money. We had no fridge so we kept the food in the pantry.” Jenny always had the use

Jenny Walker with children Tina, Peter, Mark and Lee

Joan Goff with her son David.

of the car so “was able to go down to Dudeney and Johnson supermarket in Stony Stratford and to Wolverton market, but I went to the butcher’s in the village. I had a fridge but I only had the freezer at the top of the fridge.” As Janet didn’t drive she “always did the shopping on a Saturday so my husband could take me. We usually went to Tesco in Northampton.” Wendy’s husband, Graham, “did all the shopping once a week in Tesco because he works for Tesco. I only went to the village shop for odd bits I’d forgotten. As we had a fridge and a freezer the shopping only needed to be done once a week. We’ve never grown any of our own vegetables.”

Despite all the work which had to be done, time was found for relaxation. Gladys “belonged to the WI, I was one of the first members. I used to walk to the meeting in the dark, we had no street lights then but you were never afraid to go out.” Margaret didn’t belong to the WI because “my place was at home looking after the children. The only time we went out was to football and cricket dinners at the village hall.” Joan didn’t have a lot of time for hobbies because “my husband was a magician and he used to do shows in

the evenings and at weekends. I’d come home from work and I’d get all dolled up and we’d go entertaining. The boys would go to my Mum, they both worshipped her.” Jenny took her family to see their great-grandma every afternoon after school and her weekly outing was to the village hall for whist drives and she would also “take my Mum and grandma to bingo in Potterspury and Deanshanger. We also went to parties at friends’ houses and sometimes to discos in the village hall. We didn’t

have baby sitters, the kids went to my Mum.” Wendy and Graham “didn’t go out a lot in the evening but when we did, mainly on a Saturday, we’d only go to the Cock in Potterspury or the Coffee Pot in Yardley, or the village hall, and we’d have a baby sitter. My main hobby was knitting which I usually did in the evenings, jumpers for the kids and so on.”

Our millennium mum, Suzanne Dimmock, is “usually up by 7.30 a.m. and after breakfast Thomas leaves for school on his own and I take Matthew later. I work two days a week from 10 till 3 so I’m home when the boys finish school. Other days I come home and clear up in the house. The boys stay at school for lunch but I cook a meal in the evening for all of us. I go to a keep fit class at Towcester Leisure Centre one day a week and another day I go swimming. We’ve a washing machine, tumble dryer and a dishwasher, so that makes things easier. After school the boys have football training or swimming lessons and one day a week they have friends round or go to visit a friend. Thomas owns a ferret which he keeps at his uncle’s smallholding and he catches rabbits which his grandmother makes into rabbit stew. I also work two evenings a week so I always prepare the dinner, maybe shepherd’s pie or chilli, the evening before, as it’s a bit

Janet Goff and baby Steven

Wendy Todd with Shaan and Zoe.

of a rush on those nights, because I have to go out soon after Chris, my husband, gets home. We have yoghurt, fruit or ice cream for pudding. After the boys have done their homework they watch television until they go to sleep between 8 and 9 p.m. They each have their own TV in their bedrooms. For entertainment we go to visit friends or they come to see us.”

So in 70 years many things have changed, mostly for the better and as Margaret Barby said “I used to work hard, it was a routine thing, I had to be quick because of the family, you just couldn’t spend too long. They say today they’ve got too much but I don’t want them to be the same as I was.

Good luck to them if they can afford everything they want, I don’t want them to have to struggle like I did. Things should improve.”

These then are the memories of some villagers over the best part of a century. They give us an insight into the life of the village during a period of changes that were probably greater than any in the village’s history. Within these recollections there are accounts of just a few of the people who have walked our streets. There have, of course, been countless others who have made their contributions, in so many different ways, to make the village what it is today.

Suzanne Dimmock